Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Bill

After discussions at the Business Committee, I seek leave to present a legislative statement on the Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Leave is sought for that course of action. Is there any objection? There is none. That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Governance and Administration Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 16 March 2023, and that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting except during oral questions and during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, despite Standing Order 196.

The recent severe weather events in the North Island have caused widespread damage to land, waterways, infrastructure, and roading. Most of these areas are now moving away from the initial emergency response and into the recovery phase, where the needs of our communities are broader and more complex. We need to make sure that recovery is not held back by the existing legislative framework, and that the actions that need to be taken to support the recovery can happen in a timely and efficient manner. The Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Bill will enable this. The bill is intended to assist people, their communities, iwi and hapū, and local authorities with the recovery and improve resilience for the areas affected by severe weather events. It will make urgent changes to statutes to facilitate recovery in the areas affected by recent weather events. The bill will ensure emergency powers are available when needed and that these can be carried out efficiently. The amendments will help local authorities to take immediate action to improve resilience to future weather events. They will also help all local authorities and civil defence and emergency management groups to operate safely and effectively.

We have experience with previous emergencies, such as the earthquakes in Canterbury and Kaikōura, which required urgent legislation to change existing legislative constraints to support recovery. We have used these experiences and the lessons learnt while drafting this bill. The bill will make urgent direct amendments to the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002, the Local Government Act 2002, the Resource Management Act 1991, the Food Act 2014, and Food Regulations 2015 to provide relief to those people and communities affected by the severe weather. This will support recovery and provide authorities with the powers necessary to facilitate an efficient, timely, and effective recovery. In particular, the amendments will help local authorities with their planning and decision making and will also allow for concurrent declarations of states of emergency and transition periods and enable remote attendance at meetings. It will also modify statutory time frames—that are not always practical for businesses or individuals to meet during an emergency or response—for a limited time to permit certain emergency response activity carried out by rural landowners and occupiers.

The bill amends the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act—or the CDEM Act—to address some known issues around concurrent declarations of states of emergency and notices of transition periods. Making these changes will help civil defence and emergency management groups access emergency powers when they are needed, which will reduce delays which cause risks to health and safety. It is essential that CDEM groups have quick access to the full range of powers available under the CDEM Act to respond to any other emergencies that may impact their communities while we respond to and recover from emergency events.

The bill also makes time-limited changes to parts of the Resource Management Act (RMA) to permit certain emergency or remedial actions to be carried out by owners or occupiers of rural land. The RMA changes also extend time frames for advising local authorities that emergency work was undertaken and applying for retrospective consents of emergency work. Under the RMA, local authorities have rights of entry without prior notice to any place. Given the large number of evacuations that have occurred, the bill requires that anyone entering a place under those RMA powers when the occupier cannot be found there must display a notice with the date of entry, reasons for entry, and the contact details of a person who can provide further information. This notice must be in a prominent place on the land and written notice must be served to the relevant ratepayer. This is the same approach taken following the Hurunui/Kaikōura earthquakes and tsunami events. We know that it may not be possible for the people dealing with the impacts of the severe weather events to comply with the RMA planning and regulatory requirements or to meet existing time frames for retrospective consents. These changes are similar to provisions in the Hurunui/Kaikōura Earthquakes Emergency Relief Act. I understand that after these earthquakes, these provisions provided significant help and certainty to local authorities, infrastructure providers, and rural landowners and occupiers.

These provisions help carry out emergency works quickly and enable the return of critical services. I’m inviting the committee to consider the most appropriate drafting to ensure that damage to infrastructure that was initiated by the severe weather events—but occurs some weeks or months after the event—is sufficiently covered. This relates to the wording in section 330A and 330B(1) of the Act.

The bill amends the Local Government Act 2002 to enable local authorities and civil defence emergency management groups to enable local authorities and civil defence emergency management groups to meet by audio or visual link, and for the members to be counted as present. Currently, these groups are able to attend remotely, but their votes are not counted. This restriction can become particularly difficult during an emergency, as some elected officials may not be able to attend meetings in person because of damaged roads or bridges. This amendment will help with timely decision-making as part of the response and recovery.

The bill also proposes amendments to the Local Government Act to ensure that local authorities are not prohibited from amending their current long-term plans in relation to water services and infrastructure. Currently, due to the recent water services reforms, local authorities cannot include any content relating to water services in their long-term planning, given these responsibilities are due to be transferred to new water service entities. The recent extreme weather caused significant damage to water infrastructure and water services. This will require local authorities to amend their current long-term plans in response to this damage. The bill proposes that the Local Government Act be amended to enable local authorities to amend their current long-term plans in relation to water services. This change is also extended to local authorities that are unaffected by the cyclone, who may also wish to amend their current long-term plans to take immediate action to improve their resilience to future weather events.

Finally, the bill amends registration and verification requirements in the Food Act 2014 and the Food Regulations 2015. These changes will extend the registration period for a food business so these businesses can continue to operate during a time where their registration may have expired. It will also exempt food businesses from verification requirements during an extended period.

Alongside the changes to the RMA, we recognise that it may be difficult for affected communities to follow the regulatory requirements for food businesses and this will allow them to stay open. This is an important change, not just to provide certainty to businesses but to ensure these businesses can remain open and provide food throughout this uncertain period, particularly for small and isolated communities. The risk of not making these changes is that the recovery will be slowed down or stopped by the current regulatory environment. These urgent amendments under the bill will help facilitate the initial stages of the recovery and provide legal certainty where needed, and we need to make these changes as soon as possible.

The Government recognises that passing emergency legislation can reduce the ability of the public and other organisations to provide input into the bill and for the full scrutiny of parliamentary select committee processes. However, this needs to be balanced with the need to provide certainty for the recovery effort, on what emergency legislation may be provided. This is critical as recovery efforts will likely encounter substantive repair and rebuild issues and individuals and businesses may face regulatory requirements that they struggle to meet.

I’ve considered the issues, and I believe that a shortened parliamentary process is justified for these changes. I ask Parliament to support the bill and acknowledge the collaboration and cooperation from other parties in planning for this and its procedure. Cyclone Gabrielle, Cyclone Hale in the North Island, and heavy rain events—including the Auckland floods—have been devastating for our communities, and it is vital that we have the tools we need to support people to recover as quickly as possible. This will not be a short process, but this is part of the many ways we can support those impacted by those devastating severe weather events. And therefore, I am pleased to commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I don’t think anybody who didn’t experience the weather events in the upper North Island, Hawke’s Bay, the Gisborne area, and the Auckland area, or who hasn’t been there subsequently—as I haven’t yet—could begin to comprehend the scale of the damage, destruction, and trauma on people’s lives that has occurred. I think, as economic development spokesperson, I do hope to get up to those areas, but at this stage we are in a response and recovery phase, not a rebuild phase, and I want to commend Government members, local members, my own colleagues who have provided support to their communities through this very difficult period.

I also want to acknowledge the Minister and the Leader of the House for their engagement in what is a very expedited process, but I have appreciated that Ministers Robertson and McAnulty have shared with us their plans, got final drafts of the bill to us in a manner and at a time when the National Party were able to have a good look at what is an omnibus bill—so it needed multiple pairs of eyes over it—and work constructively to ensure that we have a process that will have this bill passed. I should say, from the outset, the National Party will be supporting it through its stages.

That acknowledgment may not be across the House, in terms of process, but, you know, look, I’ve been part of a Cabinet that’s been there before, and I know how hard and how important it is to get the legislative regulatory framework in place to do the right thing. So I acknowledge the need to do that, and National will be supporting it.

I speak, in the first reading, as a bit of an opening bat in an omnibus bill where the majority of the changes come in the environment space, the Resource Management Act (RMA) space, and the local government space, and the emergency management response. Two of my colleagues are unable to speak at this time on that so I’m very happy to kick things off. Look, this is a solid-looking piece of legislation but I’m pleased it’s going to get some scrutiny, even if it’s only for 36 hours, because I think there are a couple of potentially clunky or cumbersome aspects of it—and I acknowledge and appreciate the fact that Minister McAnulty has said that, you know, we can make this better, and if there are things that come out of the select committee process, then that will be something we can attend to.

I’ll give the House an example of where I think there perhaps could have been a slightly sharper emphasis. One is in the timing of the expiries of certain provisions of the bill which are very—well, they’re all over the place, really. Some of them are expiring in May this year; some of them aren’t expiring until 1 April 2025. One of the things that worries me a little bit is that we have put hard closures on some of these obviously temporary changes. But if, in fact, as we go through this recovery phase, it is deemed that it’s necessary to extend them, it seems to me that we would have to do that by primary legislation. I wonder if a better way to do that is to put an expiry of, say, 24 months across the whole bill, and then give powers to—and I’m not a big fan of Orders in Council but I’m pretty sure this could be done by Orders in Council we could bring the expiry of certain parts of this bill forward. It would seem to me that would be a more of a belts and braces approach.

The Minister mentioned sections 330A and 330B(1), and I think that is an area where the select committee does need to have a look at it. This is where there are powers to go on to properties, I think, for activities that are deemed necessary, even if it’s not possible to contact the owner or occupier of the property. Now, the definition at 330AA (1) includes “a person, local authority, consent authority, network utility operator, or [a] lifeline utility” when they’re undertaking an activity. It doesn’t appear to me and to our broadcasting and communications spokesperson that that could include a telco. As far as I can tell, a telco is not meeting a definition of a network utility operator; it may do—I don’t think it does. So that’s something the select committee will need to have a look at: is the definition sufficiently broad to enable telcos to go on to land? Because, as we know, communications were down for a long period of time in the East Coast area and it’s going to be absolutely vital that these sorts of things can happen.

That’s, I guess, an example of where there are some things that we’re doing in this bill that are temporary, but, actually, they seem like a good idea anyway. I know that officials would say to Ministers “Oh, well, we need to do more policy work before we can, perhaps, make permanent changes to legislation.” But, actually, for example, allowing councils to meet by Zoom, or local authorities to meet by an other-than-in-person means seems to me, in the wake of the pandemic, and what we know now in the emergency, like a pretty sensible thing to do. Why would we have a sunset clause on that sort of change? We probably won’t have time to address that in the two days we’ve got to consider the bill, but I do think it’s worth thinking about for the future.

Now, there’s been quite a bit of feedback that my colleagues have received, particularly from the farming community about their powers to be able to restore land or waterways to what they were pre-flood, and the degree to which taking that action might put them at risk of them being in breach of the RMA. Up until this point, it did appear that they would then need to go and get a retrospective application which, if it was declined, could put them in something of a quandary. The worry they have is that they are either putting themselves at risk or they will act too conservatively to actually get a recovery in a timely manner.

I do note that the bill does provide for an ability to do that but it does have something of a sting in the tail, potentially. There will be an amendment, by way of new sections 331B and 331C, I think, in respect of the activities that they do need to take if they believe, on reasonable cause, that “it is causing or is likely to cause loss of life or injury to humans, loss of life or serious detriment to the health or wellbeing of animals, or serious damage to land or property”—that’s all very important—and that the activity will, after the passage of this legislation, be deemed to be permitted unless they don’t do the paperwork right, is my reading of the bill—if they don’t give the necessary written notices to the relevant consent authorities or they fail to comply with subsection (2) of section 331B. It does seem to be a little bit bureaucratic.

I can just imagine a few farmers out in these affected areas who are not going to be paying too much attention to the paperwork once they know that they can go ahead and do the work that they need to do to correct waterways, to remove silt, and to clear other debris and create the conditions for better animal welfare. I just can’t see them—if it’s a permitted activity, it’s a permitted activity. Let’s not punish them by having even a retrospective—an obligation to do it is fine, but to deem that permitted activity “not permitted” just because they didn’t do the paperwork I think is just a little bit hard. So I hope we hear tomorrow from the rural community, perhaps Federated Farmers or other organisations that can take a look at this and see whether or not this is a risk that I perceive, because the last thing we’d want is to have this bill passed and then not have the required effect.

I think there is also a similar clunkiness in respect of the food regulations, which, basically, says you can extend a registration if it’s been expired only if you pay a fee and meet the conditions of the Food Act at sections 56 or 86B. Again, that should be deemed to be the case if they were registered one day and compliant one day. Let’s not get them jumping through hoops, because it would appear that would undermine the expeditious nature of this clause.

So there are things we can do to improve it, I think. It’s really important that we have that conversation tomorrow with submitters and officials, so that we can make this the best bill it can be.

I thank the Minister, Kieran McAnulty, for bringing this piece of legislation to the House, and colleagues from around the House—including the Hon Michael Woodhouse, who’s just spoken about this bill—for the cooperative and constructive approach that they are taking to what is an important piece of legislation, as we continue to support regions of our country that have been devastated by the events of the past six weeks between the anniversary weekend floods and Cyclone Gabrielle.

I think probably by now many members of the House will have had the opportunity to visit some of the affected regions, and, indeed, some members will live in those affected regions. As they say, there’s nothing quite like seeing these things for yourself. I spent some time around Napier and the Hawke’s Bay last week, touring around in particular the damage to transport infrastructure but also gaining an insight into the extraordinary damage through wide swathes of what was previously productive, lived-upon farmland and horticultural areas. And these areas are just unrecognisable from what they were before. The damage across transport infrastructure—both road and rail—productive land, private property, and community facilities is immense and, no doubt, for the people who are living in those places, overwhelming.

And so really it is with that scale of damage in mind that we contemplate in the House taking the relatively extraordinary measure of a piece of legislation like this, which we will be progressing much, much faster than an ordinary piece of legislation. It will extend certain powers and abilities to take actions that we would not normally allow for, but the scale of the damage is such that it is important that we give both private individuals, local councils, and other authorities the ability to get on with the job and support those communities as we continue to work through what is the tail end of an emergency situation for many people.

I want to specifically focus my comments on the importance of this bill for the repair of transport infrastructure within the affected regions. And here I note all of the regions who have been severely affected, from Northland to Auckland, Coromandel, Hawke’s Bay, Tai Rāwhiti, the Central Hawke’s Bay, Wairarapa, and the Waikato—all of which have been affected very, very severely. Now, my trip down to the Hawke’s Bay, going through the Esk Valley—the sights were extraordinary: the Napier to Wairoa rail line, which had only been restored as recently as three years ago, to all intents and purposes looked like someone had picked it up, screwed it into a ball, and thrown it back on the ground, such was the force of the of the weather events. Critical roading connections, including around about 50 bridges, have either been compromised or destroyed across the State highway and local roading network through Tai Rāwhiti and the Hawke’s Bay. And all of this infrastructure is critical for the community life and supply chains of those regions.

Now, the overall recovery is going to take a long time. The full recovery will take place over a period of some years, but the period in front of us, in terms of the rebuild of transport infrastructure in the coming months, is a critical one. Transport rebuild is taking place in three phases. The first is the restoration of lifeline links. That is, ensuring that communities who were disconnected by the extreme weather events are reconnected for the purposes of basic supplies, food and water, fuel, medical access, and, in some cases, the need to take account of animal welfare needs. That job’s completed in around about 75 percent of the situations across Hawke’s Bay and Tai Rāwhiti, and there are other areas in Northland and Auckland where we still have not achieved those reconnections. That work is the number one priority and absolutely critical: to restore those key connections for communities who do still remain, basically, cut off from key supplies that are just so important for the maintenance of life in those areas.

Following on from that, we will move into a phase which will be focused on the restoration of basic service levels for communities and supply chains across the affected regions. That will be a big job. That will be a job which is in the billions rather than the hundreds of millions of dollars. But the task in front of us in the next few months is to get on with the job as quickly and as efficiently as we reasonably can, to restore those connections for communities. And the provisions of this piece of legislation give Waka Kotahi and local authorities the ability on the ground to do that, to be able to work through consent processes much more efficiently and, indeed, retrospectively, where that is required in order to be able to restore those lifeline connections. Quite simply, without the provisions of this piece of legislation, the restoration of those connections to communities who desperately need them would take much longer, and I don’t think that that is something that any of us would want to see for communities who need action as soon as possible.

I do particularly note the comments of the Minister in his reference to section 330A and 330B(1), where he has noted his intention to table a Supplementary Order Paper which will address the issue about damage which has occurred subsequent to the original weather events. The original weather events which are identified in the legislation are the Auckland Anniversary weekend floods, Cyclone Hale, and Cyclone Gabrielle. However, there has been some significant damage done to roading and other infrastructure that has actually occurred, connected to but subsequent to those events. For example, the most recent significant slip, which has cut off State Highway 25 around the Coromandel Peninsula, actually occurred about two weeks after the original weather event. And so the Minister’s reference to that particular issue was making sure that in the scope of the legislation, we will clearly have the ability to deal with those issues that are clearly connected to the original weather events but might have happened sometime after them. That will be an important matter to be considered as we work through this bill in the next few days, and I hope that we can get a good outcome on that.

I acknowledge the other changes that are proposed in the legislation. Coming out of local government myself, I agree with both the Minister and the Hon Michael Woodhouse about the importance of giving some flexibility to local government at these times, as, for example, Parliament gave itself as we dealt with the exigencies of COVID. In places like the Coromandel, a cut-off road will potentially mean that local elected representatives face a 2½ hour journey each way in order to be able to get to council chambers to take part in important discussions and decision-making for their regions. It is only reasonable and appropriate that we give those local authorities the ability to carry out their business in an effective way at a time when their communities need them to be making decisions at a reasonable pace. I believe that’s important, and while I don’t think decisions have been made on this, I certainly hear the calls from the member opposite who just spoke about possibly considering the value of that being a longer-term arrangement as well.

I do believe that the way that we’re working this bill through the House is as good as it could be. It has clearly been moved through quickly, but, through cooperation between parties, we are going to have a short process, which will allow scrutiny of the legislation. That is always desirable; it is important. And, as the Minister indicated, the Government is committed to making improvements where we can, as a result of good, constructive dialogue in that short select committee process and as a result of debate in the House and in the committee of the whole House.

I acknowledge again the Minister for bringing this piece of legislation to the House. It’s a very important part of affecting these regions who have been so devastated. It will be critical for the transport rebuild, and I look forward to its speedy passage in the coming days. I commend the bill to the House.

Forty-five days ago, the rain began to fall in Auckland. I remember that evening, and it was about this time, because I ended up sleeping in the regional terminal at Auckland Airport as a result of not only planes not being able to fly out of that airport but the inability to leave that airport because of significant flooding. Watching the TV screens from the airport, along with many other people through that evening and into the night and overnight, it was very clear at that point that not only our city but one of the biggest regions in our country was embarking on a significant weather event that was going to have long-lasting implications that we continue to feel and continue to see today.

The result and the response of those members of our communities, particularly those first responders, on that evening, on 27 January and the days following, were in all instances heroic and there are multiple stories that we’ve heard in this House in regards to those actions by those individuals, common people, average Kiwis across the country and across the city that went over and above what was required to help their fellow neighbour. That was a challenging time, and then what we saw following not only a few weeks subsequent to that and further on were the other implications particularly in Tai Rāwhiti and the Hawke’s Bay region in terms of the significant implications of the cyclone, which brings us to where we are this evening in regards to passing legislation: the Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Bill.

As has been noticed by our prior speaker, the Hon Michael Woodhouse, the National Party will be supporting this legislation alongside the Government, and that is because it is absolutely appropriate and practical that we do take the appropriate steps to deal with a number of the aspects that need to be dealt with, and, in particular, deal with some of the legislative elements that are holding not only the response back but also enable us to move forward should we be faced—and when we are faced—with a similar circumstance in the future. I think it is, without doubt, that with the amount of increased weather events that we’ve seen in this short amount this of time this year, it is no doubt that that is something that we need to actively prepare for as we go forward into the future.

The changes in this legislation, as the Minister has articulated, relate in regards to the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act. I’m not going to go into detail around those aspects. There were also changes in regards to the Resource Management Act, in regards to the time frames around advising local authorities and being able to apply for consent in terms of emergency work.

I guess, those aspects, in terms of the relationship between local government and our community are critically important. As National’s spokesperson for local government and regional development, I’ve absolutely seen and continue to get dialogue from councils and mayors across the country, and, in particular, in the regions heavily affected, that there are elements that we need to improve.

But I do want to also acknowledge the significant efforts by those members of our community who work in local government and in local councils and our territorial authorities and those organisations and companies and entities that support those councils, for the work that they have done and continue to do day in and day out. We’ve seen their faces on TV. And even though the headlines aren’t hitting every night, you can see in many of their faces the tiredness of the significant contribution that they have done for their communities. They are the unsung heroes in regards to providing that local on-the-ground response, which is completely unmatched.

While here in Wellington, we may often think that we have a significant influence in regards to dealing with local events, it is our local communities that are best placed to deal with local issues, and those are the individuals and those are the elements within our community that really come to the front when we’re dealing with such significant implications, and those are the individuals that wear multiple hats in our communities.

So while they may be a councillor on the local council or on the local board or even the mayor, often their other hat is in a voluntary capacity, whether it’s a local fireman for the fire brigade or part of their local St John’s or they’re a member of one of the local charities that provide support, or Red Cross and other elements in their family and all their elements are all linked, as well. That’s what happens in local communities across this country, and particularly in rural and provincial New Zealand.

There is one component that I want to raise in this bill which I think is disappointing: that the Government has used this opportunity to fix an error in regards to the three waters Water Services Entities Act. They’ve used this piece of severe weather emergency legislation to correct an error in the Water Services Entities Act, in clause 14, in regards to the issue around long-term plans. This is not a clause related to the cyclone. The Minister didn’t pay too much wording to this clause when he provided an overview, and there’s a reason why that is. It’s because they’re using this bill to push through this correction which is completely—well, there’s a number of words for it: a little bit or trickery, a little bit of craftiness, skulduggery. But that is the reality. Clause 14 of this bill needs to be very clearly looked at by the committee tomorrow. The question needs to be asked: is this clause directly related to the severe weather emergency events that we’re dealing with or is this simply coincidental, an opportunity because they made a mistake and it wasn’t clear around what long-term plans need to be completed by councils as part of the three waters legislation, and they’ve now created a precedent where councils are unable to do their long-term plans, until the water services entities come into effect on 1 July 2024—and they know that’s an issue, because it’s been raised by councils, including in select committee—and they’ve used this legislation to pump through a quick fix.

Well, we can talk all night—and we will, and many speakers will talk about the good elements of this bill. But it is a real shame that the Minister has decided that, actually, while we’re pushing this through in good faith on all sides of this House, now is the opportunity to just push through a little convenience clause to fix up an error on top of multiple errors in legislation, as we all know, in regards to the Water Services Entities Bill. So I want to raise that very clearly. I’d like, and I expect, to discuss that at the committee stage. I’m expecting to have a very clear articulation in terms of what is the true justification for clause 14 of this bill and why is it necessary that it includes councils and territorial authorities that are not implicated by the cyclone, which is what the Minister said in his opening address—he said it quite subtly, right? Might not have picked up on it, but he mentioned it. That is important for us to go through, because we’re all here trying to do the right thing, and I think we’re all absolutely on board with that. But that does not provide an off-ramp for this type of opportunistic implementation of a clause in a bill that deals with issues because of poor regulation-making by a Government in regards to bills that are not related to this cyclone.

So that is all I’m going to cover at this point. I’m looking forward to going through the committee phase that will follow, and the shortened select committee process tomorrow. I acknowledge that, all in all, the majority of this legislation, with the exception of the clause that I’ve noted, is absolutely fully supported by this side of the House. I do hope and wish that the speedy pushing through of this legislation positively benefits those communities across this country that have been and continue to be heavily impacted by the severe weather events that occurred and started to occur just 45 days ago. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

It’s 14 March today, and on 14 February, one month ago, in Te Tai Rāwhiti we were about, oh, 15 or so hours into an event which will become one of the most devastating in our region’s history. Always in Te Tai Rāwhiti, in terms of weather events, we have benchmarked and looked to Bola as the event that kind of defines—it’s before Bola or after. That changed us in 1988. Well, Gabrielle certainly put Bola in its place. When you get up into the region and you look over the damage that’s been done throughout the entire landscape, it’s like deep fingernails have scratched through the surface, impacting towns, communities—22 communities in Te Tai Rāwhiti. Currently, we have 1,100 people still disconnected, and the road ahead is really long.

This legislation brought by my colleague the Minister for Emergency Management, the Hon Kieran McAnulty, it’s incredibly helpful and has been requested by the councils and people of our place. So I want to acknowledge our colleague, Minister McAnulty, for responding in such a pragmatic and efficient manner.

Before I just turn to the nuts and bolts of the bill and the ways in which the provisions in this bill will assist communities like mine, Te Tai Rāwhiti, I really want to put on record just some of the beyond human, almost, stories from the people that responded one month ago in our region. There’s a particular chap, though—his name’s Frank. Frank had only been in the civil defence role for Te Karaka for about three months, I think, and I met Frank on about 16 February. That was about two or three days after he had taken about 500 people from a small township called Te Karaka up two hills at 5 a.m. on the morning of the 13th, when the Waipawa breached. When I met him two days after that, and a couple of other hundred from Te Karaka, they sat for 27 hours up on those hills because, as it played out, all of the ordinary communications that we’ve become so reliant on—phones, internet, you name it—she was gone. So they didn’t know what to do because there was simply no information to help guide them. But they watched from those two hills in Te Karaka as their homes were destroyed.

You know, you go up the coast a little bit and you meet with somebody like Lillian Te Hau-Ward, who has, essentially, been in response mode since, really, 10 January—that was when Cyclone Hale presented itself. That’s 10 January, and we’re in 14 March now. People are tired, but it’s people like Lillian Te Hau-Ward, who runs a very, very tight ship up there in Tokomaru Bay, servicing the hundreds of people that are reliant on people like her, her leadership—it’s just hard to comprehend and hard to share and hard to grapple with the nature of the things that they’re dealing with in our little hometowns. So I bring these stories to this House to uphold and acknowledge them and to put a spotlight on them, because they are heroes and they are heroines, and they are still right now in that state of response, because the roads are out and there’s a long task ahead of us.

This bill, I said in my opening remarks, had been called for by local government. In my neck of the wood, I want to acknowledge our mayor, Her Worship Rehette Stoltz, and her chief executive Nedine Thatcher Swann, and the Controller, Ben Green. Now, those three have been this indomitable sort of tripartite that’ve led us through these two most recent events but seven severe weather events over the past 18 months.

One of the things that this bill will do—there’s two things. One, it’ll enable them to be able to have meetings, because currently people can’t practically physically travel from Ruatōria and Tokomaru Bay and all the way up the coast to the council meeting. So I’m sure that the likes of—oh, well, you know, all of the councils up the coast will be a little bit pleased; I’m thinking of you, Rawinia Parata. But they’ll be able to continue with their council business, and it’s so important that those voices are around the decision making, the council-making tables, because it’s those communities that are in absolute isolation.

But secondly, too, there’s just the flexibility that we’re providing through this bill, and whilst the Opposition found some negative comments to make there, being able to amend those long-term plans, particularly with regards to their water infrastructure, is going to be absolutely fundamental. It’s just completely shattered itself in a region like ours. So those powers that this bill provides to those councils have been sought, and I commend the Minister for responding in the way in which he has.

Turning very briefly to the amendments that this bill makes in the Resource Management Act, as has been said in this House a few times now, our horticulturalists, particularly in my region, and, of course, our farmers, sheep and beef specifically, are working like the clappers—you know, we’re still getting a strong grasp in terms of what the nature of the devastation is, and I’ve just got to acknowledge every single one of them that have had crops destroyed, farms absolutely decimated. But they are undertaking that task, which, is, you know, moving silt and actually getting stock off property and doing what they need to do. They’re taking preventative and remedial action, which is required. Now, you know, this ordinarily requires permits for a lot of the work that’s been undertaken by those on the land, but I appreciate what these amendments will mean to people that are just cracking on and doing the job. Now’s not the time to be doing that paperwork.

I want to acknowledge the environmental issues, because I know that there’s some concerns there, but in a time of crisis it’s not unusual for Governments to be able to bypass the ordinary processes in order for that expediency.

So, look, with my full support, in my role as the Minister responsible for the recovery in Te Tai Rāwhiti and the Bay of Plenty, I want to commend—and I want to acknowledge our colleagues who have been working tirelessly on this, including the Minister Grant Robertson, to make sure that our response is locally led, and that these provisions that come through in this legislation tonight enable that locally led response. So, therefore, I wholeheartedly commend this bill to the House.

E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. I’m pleased to take a short call on the Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Bill. It is a short bill, but it is an important one. Like the Hon Kiritapu Allan, I really acknowledge the huge heroism of so many on the ground in areas that have been affected by these severe weather events and their strength in keeping on going on this long road to recovery and the dedication that they are applying to supporting others. I also thank the media for the stories that they have shared with Aotearoa New Zealand and beyond, which has enabled others to come in and awhi and support those who have been affected.

This small bill is important, because it does override existing legislation—normally the Green Party is never very comfortable about that, particularly if it’s being debated by Parliament under a very shortened select committee period of only a day, but if this doesn’t go through this week, recognising that next week is a recess week, then potentially some of the activities that are being done in Tai Rāwhiti, in Hawke’s Bay, in the Bay of Plenty, in Tararua, and in Auckland are illegal. So that’s why we are supporting the bill and acknowledging the reality of a shortened select committee period being necessary in this instance.

Aotearoa has suffered a lot of emergencies from, in recent years, the Pike River mine disaster, the Christchurch earthquake sequence, the Rena oil spill, the Kaikōura-Hurunui earthquakes, Mycoplasma bovis, the Port Hills, the Nelson-Tasman fires, the Christchurch mosque attack—of course, we’re coming up to a significant anniversary of that—and Whakaari / White Island. Our emergency management system is how we organise and manage the people, the plans, the infrastructure, and the assets which are needed to respond to these events. There is a small element in this bill, in terms of the video meetings, which comes out of something that the Hon Gerry Brownlee initiated back in 2017, a technical advisory group to look at the experience of the Canterbury earthquakes and how emergency management could be improved. There have been subsequent amendments to legislation to take account of those learnings.

One of the changes here to the Resource Management Act is to allow landholders and land occupiers, if they’ve been affected by Cyclone Hale, Cyclone Gabrielle, and the Auckland Anniversary Weekend storm to take action if they consider that immediate preventative or remedial measures are required to avoid, remedy, or mitigate loss, injury, detriment, or damage. That means that these activities, responding to the weather damage, can be done as a permitted activity. There were very similar provisions done in response to the Kaikōura-Hurunui earthquake sequence, which assisted, particularly a lot in the farming community, to respond where there’d been major slips, earthworks were needed, fencing needed to be restored, works in riverbeds to actually enable them to farm again.

I do not recall any evidence that there was any abuse of those provisions, and I think, while Mr Woodhouse has raised the burden of paperwork, I do note that the bill refers to the landholder or occupier simply providing written notice to the council within 60 days. That potentially could just be by email. It’s not requiring anything similar to a resource consent application, and communication is critical in recovering from disaster events. Having the council know the scale of works that are being done in rivers, on erosion-prone hillsides, for infrastructure—like culverts and bridges—is important in terms of coordinating the recovery efforts. So just this notification to the local authority, I think, is an important provision.

I recognise too our whole civil defence and emergency network, and the significant effort and involvement of local authorities in that. They are the foundation of that. So the provisions in the bill which allow the emergency management groups to meet by video and councils to meet by video are important. I was surprised to see those in the bill—that this hadn’t been done before. Parliament select committees meet by Zoom all of the time—not all of the time, some of the time. Why local authorities can’t do that permanently and why this measure to allow them to meet by video ends in April 2024 seems puzzling; similarly with the emergency groups. That should just be part of the nature that they operate now, recognising, of course, if communications are down, that will be challenging—but recognising that when roads are closed and it’s not physically possible to meet face to face they should be able to meet by audiovisual means. It’s also a much more efficient use of time when these people are enormously busy in doing the response and coordinating others. So both of those seem logical. Similarly, with the changes to the Food Act and the food regulations, to allow an extended period for food businesses to renew their operations and continue operating, that also seems a really sensible change. The bill is going to the Governance and Administration Committee and the astute chairing of Ian McKelvie, I’m sure, will draw out any issues in it.

I do just want to respond to some comments made by Simon Watts in relation to three waters. I similarly was puzzled when I first saw that provision in the bill, which allows councils to amend their long-term plan in relation to three waters infrastructure, but recognising that in Tai Rāwhiti, Gisborne, the huge damage to their water network would mean that unless there was provision like that, which allowed them to amend their long-term plan, they may not be able to have the funding to improve that network. So that made sense; it was obviously something the select committee didn’t pay enough attention to when the Water Services Entities Bill went through last year, because potentially, unless that prohibition on councils investing in waters services through their long-term plans is removed, it creates a deficit in terms of what the entities will inherit when they come into operation. So that change also made sense.

It’s a small bill, but it will be very useful in terms of a better-coordinated emergency response and allowing people to get on the road to recovery and actually do the work on the ground and to ensuring that the declarations of emergency and the transition period that any of the issues with those overlapping are worked through as well. So it’s a bill that the Green Party supports.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Let’s just go over some key dates, why this legislation that Labour’s brought to the House tonight is necessary, and what ACT believes we could do to improve it.

So the floods hit Auckland, devastated large parts of Auckland, on 27 January. Cyclone Gabrielle arrived in Auckland: motorways were closed, the Harbour Bridge was closed on 6 February, and that storm devastated Coromandel, Northland, Bay of Plenty, parts of Auckland, Tai Rāwhiti, and the Hawke’s Bay, and eventually dissipated on 16 February. A national emergency was declared on 14 February, round about seven days after the storm first hit New Zealand. What did the Government do? Well, they declared a state of emergency. Civil Aviation rang up Napier Airport and said, “You better shut down the airport to general aviation because we’ve heard there’s planes in the air, and there might be too many aeroplanes and helicopters up there trying to save people, rescue people, and deliver them food and water at the same time. You better shut that airspace down.” Well, a helicopter pilot said, “You know what? We’re used to flying—when we look up the valley, we fly up the left-hand side and we fly down the right-hand side. And we never, ever, ever ask anyone for permission, because this is how we operate helicopters in Hawke’s Bay. But no, the Government—Civil Aviation—rang up the airport and said, “You better close your general airspace.”

And then what did we have? The Prime Minister and other Government Ministers gaslighting the people of Hawke’s Bay, saying that there was no crime, there was no looting, there were no gang members patrolling, toddling around in cars, looking for things to take and people to harass. There were no ram raids. There were no robberies. There’s nothing to see here. Well, it turned out that after a few days, the Prime Minister admitted he was wrong.

Then, of course, we’ve heard all the sounding off from Labour Ministers about where people should be stopped from living—what they called managed retreat. But when David Seymour and I visited the Hawke’s Bay, what we saw—

💬 Anna Lorck: Hawke’s Bay—no “the”.

—Anna Lorck—was stopbanks that had worked and protected towns like Taradale, and stopbanks that had failed because they were made of nothing more than gravel piled up from the river, and they had never been designed and built or maintained properly. So when we hear about managed retreat in places the Government wants to stop you living, let’s first look at the infrastructure. And that is why—after consulting with farmers, with contractors, with builders, with people in local civil defence actually carrying out the recovery in Hawke’s Bay—ACT put together 15 urgent ideas for recovery from Cyclone Gabrielle, which we released on the 3 March. Fifteen ideas. We didn’t wait till 14 March to turn up with the half-baked bill, tinkering around with the Resource Management Act (RMA) and trying to fix a few things with three waters, like Labour has. We had 15 urgent ideas for recovery, which we had road tested with the people of Hawke’s Bay and other places that were affected.

So I want to give you a bit of a hint about what that might involve: dealing with lawlessness—dealing with lawlessness. That’s what the people of Hawke’s Bay asked for. Tougher sentencing for those criminals who were caught looting. And for goodness’ sake, can’t possibly go through with a three waters transition, taking all of Hawke’s Bay’s and other councils’ assets and handing them over to a new water service entity at the time when half of their infrastructure’s underwater and they have no idea when they’re going to be standing up the waste-water treatment plants again. And, of course, cut wasteful Government spending, reprioritise things, and remove those Resource Management Act barriers to rebuilding and recovering.

We also proposed avoiding artificial shortages of building materials by adopting standards from other countries, assuming that in Japan and California they know how to build houses and we could simply adopt their building standards in New Zealand if people wanted to order building materials. And, of course, we suggested if local government’s going to have enough revenue to rebuild, that central government should be prepared to share half of the GST that it takes from building activities—back with local government and local communities who are facing the cost of rebuilding the infrastructure—instead of keeping all of that GST money for itself and demanding that local councils and communities come begging on one knee, saying, “Please, sir, please, ma’am, can we have some money to rebuild?”

Now, I want to come to the problems with this bill, the Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Bill. It’s a truncated process—one day. And who knew—clearly, the ACT Party must be quite effective at stopping the Government doing dumb stuff, because they referred this bill to a committee that ACT does not have permanent representation on. But we’ll be doing our best to rectify that in the next few hours. Then, we’ve heard from the transport Minister about his new-found discovery that roading resilience is important. This comes just a few days after he’s cancelled the “cash for clunkers” scheme, that half-a-billion-dollar scheme that would have paid people $12,000, on average, to hand over a cruddy used car in exchange for taxpayer—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! I am very cognisant of the fact that this piece of legislation is going through the House under a truncated process. However, I have been listening to the member’s contribution and I will ask him to come back more closely to the subject matter of the bill in front of us.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. So let’s just focus on roading resilience, which is a point that the transport Minister Michael Wood brought up—how important roading resilience is, because lifeline routes in places like Hawke’s Bay and Northland and so on are important. In the National Resilience Programme Business Case in 2020, it points out that roads like the Brynderwyns are in extreme risk of failure and that Waka Kotahi should upgrade the alternate routes. And what’s happened since then? Absolutely nothing. So this new-found admiration for the role of engineers and roads that are resilient and resistant to floods and damage—well, it’s welcome, but, crikey, it’s three years late at least, Minister.

Then, we understand that one of the problems that this bill seeks to address is that local councils who want to rebuild their water infrastructure—whether it’s waste-water treatment plants, whether it’s stormwater culverts, drinking-water supplies, reservoirs—won’t be allowed to make those investments because the Water Services Entities Act says they’re not allowed to propose any investment in three waters assets between the time that Act comes into force and the time of the transition to the water service entities on 1 July 2024. The ACT Party opposes the three waters reforms because it makes no sense whatsoever to take those assets out of local council hands and centralise them. And, of course, again, the ACT Party has proven to be prescient, to have foresight and vision, in that we said that would be a bad idea. Turns out, it’s such a bad idea that even the Labour Party introducing this bill here this evening recognises that the three waters transition cannot proceed—cannot proceed—and meet those time frames, if at all, because if you take control for the delivery, for the funding, and for the operation of three waters assets away from people who are responsible for land-use planning—local government—you lose all the coherence, you lose all the links, and, of course, you lose that link between funding, financing, and delivery of water services assets.

So what would ACT do? Well, what we’ve said is here’s an alternative and we look forward to debating this at select committee and, of course, at the committee of the whole House. We’re really looking forward to that opportunity on Thursday, the committee of the whole House stage. We hope all of the other members of Parliament are looking forward to debating with us on Thursday afternoon 15 urgent ideas for recovery which are not included in this bill but should be—such as a special economic zone for the people of Hawke’s Bay so they can rebuild and recover without undue Government interference. For example, imagine this bill says that you’ll have to apply for consents to do stuff within 60 to 160 days, but you’ll only be allowed to carry out that work—emergency recovery work is a permitted activity, whether it’s clearing a slip, whether it’s fixing a culvert or standing up your barn that got knocked over—as long as you ask for permission between 60 and 160 days afterwards. And as long as it’s immediate—you do something immediately. But, of course, what we’ve already heard from Minister Michael Wood is that some of these slips and some of these geotechnical processes take months to develop. And so what the ACT Party says is that, look, we shouldn’t have to worry about getting consents for any of this stuff—if you’re fixing up roads and infrastructure, making your property safe again. In fact, that ties in very nicely with our long-term solutions to reform the RMA, which we published in November.

So the ACT Party will be supporting this bill to first reading. We have significant reservations. It goes a fraction of the way to helping Hawke’s Bay and the rest of New Zealand recover, but we will be supporting it.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I’m a little bit surprised that I’ve just heard that ACT member Simon Court talk about the recovery and response—certainly, the initial response—in a way that is quite disparaging to a vast number of Hawke’s Bay people that did it really tough. There are areas of heroism there. There were people who went over and above, there were people who put their own lives at risk, and it’s actually quite astounding that there weren’t more people who died—thank goodness.

But to say that Labour Ministers gaslighted I find quite offensive, because he’s talking about me, who’s one of the local MPs; he’s talking about Anna Lorck, one of the local MPs; he’s talking about the Hon Kieran McAnulty, who’s one of the local MPs; and talking about the Hon Meka Whaitiri, one of the local MPs. To say that we gaslighted the people of Hawke’s Bay is wrong and it’s quite offensive, because all four of the MPs that I’ve mentioned—and Kiri Allan, of course, is the local MP for Tai Rāwhiti—were out there working with our local communities, understanding what they needed, helping them, advocating for them in front of Cabinet, advocating for them in front of our caucus, and letting New Zealand know that, in fact, this was serious.

The devastation to Hawke’s Bay was significant, and I think that—I was going to take personal offence, but I thought, no, I won’t do that. But I just think that the ACT member needs to be a little bit careful in his use of language, because it belittles the efforts that some very good people who are working very hard for their constituents actually did on the day.

Members, let me tell you a story. On 10 December, myself and James Palmer, who was then the CEO of the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council—he’s now the head of the Ministry for the Environment—turned a sod on a stopbank behind the Pettigrew Green Arena. For those who know Hawke’s Bay, this is in Taradale, near the Eastern Institute of Technology. I remember looking at the stopbank and I said to James, “No way—look how high this is. The river is never going to come this high.”, and he said, “We built this for the one-in-500-year flood.” I said, “Well, OK, that’s pretty significant.”, and he said, “What we did is we also built it a metre higher than the engineers wanted.” Wow, you know, that’s pretty big, and the only way they could build that was through the COVID relief funds. So it was paid for by central government.

Well, that stopbank that was built for the one-in-500-year flood, and that was built a metre higher—the water came within 30 centimetres of the top of that stopbank, and if that stopbank had broken or if that stopbank hadn’t been there, then the conversations we’d be having today would be significantly different than the conversations we are now having, because the whole of the Taradale suburb in Napier—and, no doubt, others—would have been completely devastated.

So, again, to say that the regional council were negligent in the way that they maintained their stopbanks is, I think, just simply incorrect, and the reason I say that is because the amount of rain that fell during that 24-hour period was so far outside the parameters within the models of the regional council that it just could not have been predicted. Now, of course, we’re going to have to change all the models, and the stopbanks are going to have to be rebuilt and we’re going to have to assess how we look at risk, but the bottom line is the regional council was not negligent in the way that it treated the people of Hawke’s Bay. Hawke’s Bay members did not gaslight their communities and their local electorates. People worked incredibly hard and are continuing to, and it’s what this bill is about.

I also remember being in the Finance and Expenditure Committee on 22 February 2011, when Amy Adams received a call informing her of the most severe of the aftershocks that killed 185 people in the Canterbury earthquakes. We were—right across the House—devastated that one of our most beautiful cities could have become home to one of the most deadly events in New Zealand’s history, but the House came together in the case of the Canterbury earthquakes and passed legislation that allowed the rebuild to progress in a way that was outside the laws of the time but was necessary, given the unique circumstances and the Christchurch community’s requirements. While the loss of life from these recent weather events doesn’t match the scale of the Christchurch earthquakes, the trail of destruction is significant.

As Kiri Allan pointed out, up and down the East Coast, the soils were already sodden from a summer of very, very heavy rain. If anyone manages to fly between Napier and Gisborne, or go and have a look on any one of our Instagram accounts or social media, you will see hillsides absolutely devastated, and the people say to me, “Where did all the silt come from?” Well, it came from so many slips up and down the Coast that you’ll just look at these photos and you’ll think, “OK, that’s where the 2 metres of silt in the Esk Valley came from.”

The events of the rainfall on 14 February were significant to the point where, once again, our Government knows that in order to recover and rebuild, we need to once again come together in a bipartisan way in order to allow us to move forward. This is what the Severe Weather Emergency Relief Legislation Bill does. It’s pragmatic. Farmers don’t have to seek resource consent in order to repair their roads, shore up their infrastructure, and do what farming folk do in order to address the issues immediately facing them. It allows the application of retrospective resource consents where they’re absolutely necessary in terms of emergency work.

It allows local officials to meet remotely. I mean, you wouldn’t think you’d need to pass legislation in this day and age to enact that, but you do. Up and down our electorates, people who are elected officials on bodies—like, for example, the Wairoa people can’t come down to Hawke’s Bay Regional Council meetings or people in Napier and Hastings and central Hawke’s Bay can’t travel to Wairoa for regional council meetings, so it allows them to meet remotely.

It ensures civil defence and emergency management quick access to emergency powers. In essence, it empowers key decision-makers to move with speed and clarity where perfect is sometimes the enemy of good, and good is vital in order to get stock off land and communities reconnected and key infrastructure up and running so that at least people can move around. It’s not perfect at this point in time. Bailey bridges aren’t permanent, but we need to be able to do this sort of stuff in order to allow communities to connect and move forward.

In terms of Simon Court talking about roading resilience, well, I think one of the first announcements we made was $250 million in terms of emergency roading infrastructure. It’s not all—it’s going to cost significantly more than that. But we got money out the door really, really quickly because we understood that those who had been devastated—whether it was a lack of access or whether their orchards had been wiped out or whether the crops were devastated or whether they’d lost their homes or their livelihood or their business had been impacted—needed immediate assistance.

The Minister of Finance always said that this wasn’t the endgame but that there was more to come as we reassessed the situation, and we continue to reassess the situation. In fact, we had the extreme weather events Cabinet committee tonight. There are many, many decisions that are going to have to be made to allow Hawke’s Bay, Tai Rāwhiti, Auckland, Coromandel, and parts of central Hawke’s Bay to recover in a way that allows us to build forward and allows people to build forward with a level of certainty that’s required. But this piece of legislation is a start because, as mentioned, it’s pragmatic. It allows things to happen in a way that things need to happen and in a way things probably couldn’t happen under current legislation, and we don’t take this sort of legislation lightly—we absolutely don’t.

In fact—and I could be wrong, and no doubt some member will correct me if I am wrong. But I do think the last time we did pass this sort of legislation was actually the Christchurch earthquakes. As the member Eugenie Sage mentioned—and because I’ve been in the House all during this time, I don’t think there is any incident where people abused the legislation, because we all knew the necessity of getting it right. I think the social licence—well, no, not social licence. The credibility, the integrity, of anyone who sought to deliberately abuse this sort of legislation would have been held to account in a way that meant they probably could not live in the community that they had been part of.

This legislation also allows local authorities an alternative way of providing notice of entry for emergency activities and solutions where the landowner or the occupier isn’t present. I’ve been down to the Esk Valley about four or five times. There’s an avocado orchard there that used to belong to friends of my parents. I used to play there when I was young. The trees must be at least 50—so they’re about 10 years older than I am—and they’re completely devastated. I mean, avocado trees aren’t the most robust trees, but these are 50-year-old trees. Every single one of those trees is gone.

In fact, Esk Valley is one of those scenes—I know a lot of people know Esk Valley. It’s where you drive through to go from Napier at the beginning of the Napier to Taupō road, and it is one of those scenes, literally, where artists paint, because it’s sort of quintessential New Zealand. You’ve got your orchards, as mentioned—your avocado orchards—and you’ve got your vines, you’ve got your poplars, you’ve got your willows, you’ve got your beautiful scenes, you’ve got some nice houses on the hills, you’ve got houses on the flat. It’s completely wiped out.

So this legislation is necessary to allow us to move forward in a way that will get Hawke’s Bay up and running. It’s not the last—there’s a lot more that needs to be done—but it’s a good start.

The Hon Louise Upston—five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Like my colleagues on this side of the House, I am pleased to take a call on the Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Bill. The piece that I want to talk about specifically is the changes to the Resource Management Act 1991. This was an issue that was raised with me on 23 February, so one week after the cyclone and flooding events occurred. And I raise it because some of the landowners and farmers that I’d met with on the ground were very concerned about, you know, the threat of doing work and then being punished afterwards for unauthorised activity that in many cases they did to save lives, to save their animals’ lives, and. to a much lesser degree, about property. I think one of the things that’s really unfortunate in this—and National does support this legislation, I want to be clear about that—is the delay of the three weeks has had an enormous, enormous impact on some of the people, particularly those who live in the rural parts affected.

I’ll specifically talk about Hawke’s Bay, because that’s the area that I’ve spent time in. I think that’s the bit—we have a model of legislation: the Hurunui/Kaikōura Earthquakes Recovery Act 2016 is the one that was proposed and I think the lesson that needs to come out of this is when Parliament has legislation that has been used before, we need to be much faster. We need to be much faster. So for the issue to be raised on 23 February, three weeks later, for us to be dealing with legislation that in many cases is a very close mirror of the Hurunui/Kaikōura legislation, I think, is frustrating.

And, you know, members that have spoken who have visited many of the people involved will know that every day is another day that exhausts and stresses them. And so the inability—while in the grand scheme of things it’s a month today since the event, every day dealing with the very severe circumstances that they’re facing is a day too long. So for many of the families that are still isolated and cut off, the ability to be able to take some of those very simple actions to remediate, to restore access, to provide access to water for their stock, for example, for drinking—all of those very practical, sensible things.

It was really telling on one occasion, in one of the rural communities, getting an explanation about what was happening on the ground and a very flash car pulling up with some very, you know, well dressed people getting out. And the locals said, “There’s the clipboard Charlies.” If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have realised just how frustrated they were with the group of what they saw were officials that were to tell them off, to tell them what not to do, to tell them they had to stop. For some it was anger and frustration, and for others it was fear. It was quite remarkable—the fear of legislation like the Resource Management Act, and that they might have to do something and then apply for a retrospective consent that might not be granted, and that they would end up in court because they’d taken action on their farm to save their animals’ lives. It seems irrational, right? But, actually, that was the fear. And I think with this legislation, although National supports it, it would have been really useful if we’d got it in faster.

So I would say for those affected by it, organisations like Federated Farmers, although it’s only a short select committee process, I really hope that they do submit on it so that the legislation, if there are still wrinkles in it, can be ironed out. And I would encourage the Government to look at measures like this permanently. So instead of having to wait an additional three weeks for special legislation, actually let’s have some sensible provisions in the Resource Management Act that allow for extreme weather events and doesn’t have to have the event listed. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Kia ora. First, I’d like to share with my colleagues in a mihi to our bereaved whānau, to our affected whānau, our displaced families and businesses, and also mention the first responders and community volunteers, and all those that are out there fund-raising for the various communities as well. I think, if anything, in this crisis we’ve seen the real backbone of Aotearoa, which is aroha, manaaki, and ngākau. I also want to do a mihi to two big kaupapa that are coming up, which are the Tūtira Mai relief fund that is happening at Pipitea Marae this weekend and another big fund-raising at Hoani Waititi Marae on 25 March. The spirit of Aotearoa has certainly wrapped around the hardship of what everyone is enduring.

To return to the Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Bill, the first reading, we support the purpose of this bill. I have a couple of short things that we’d like to mention alongside that. We understand that it is to improve resilience for the areas affected by the severe weather events and their councils and communities. It’s a practical measure and clearly is needed in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle to support emergency responses. So we will be, again, as I said, supporting the bill at its first reading.

We have a few concerns. We have not seen mention of hapū, iwi, marae, Māori, or even Te Tiriti o Waitangi either in the Act or this amendment bill. We are therefore calling on the Government to adopt our recently announced policy to recognise a national Māori civil defence framework in the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act. Marae have been outstanding and they are outstanding emergency hubs, and we look forward to seeing this realised and resourced.

Having spent time in devastated communities in Ngāti Kahungunu and Tai Rāwhiti over the past few weeks, we’ve seen firsthand the importance of having aligned resources that get to the ground and get to where they’re needed. I guess what we’ve been really concerned about is we understand there is another bill in the works looking at a wider overhaul of the emergency management system. It’s also being reported that the current Minister is dropping the previous Minister Kiri Allan’s proposal to have Māori representatives with voting rights on the local emergency management groups, and this is a concern, and that there should not be Tiriti obligations—again, this is a concern that the Minister is applying this approach.

We believe that the bill before the House today shows that despite how our people, how our marae act with urgency, that they are the first to stand up supporting all peoples of Aotearoa when responding to natural disasters, that urgency is not applied to us as tangata w’enua in supporting and resourcing our people. Our people need to see the same access to resources and infrastructure as local government, such as access to helicopters, which we saw a lot of comment about. There should be legislative obligations on local and national response groups to engage and resource w’ānau, hapū, iwi, marae, Māori organisations, and community response groups.

Nō reira te āhuatanga o tēnei wero.

[So the nature of this challenge.]

Again, as I said, we support it, but we do hope that there’ll be improvements as the process quickly goes along. Kia ora rā.

E ngā mate huhua o te motu kua wehe atu ki te pō, haere, haere, moe mai rā.

[To the many deceased across the country who have departed into the night, farewell, farewell, take your rest.]

I’m pleased to take a call on the Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Bill. But as is our custom, it is important that we acknowledge those that have passed and I want to take the time to name those that have passed through the recent event that we’ve experienced in this country. I want to mention Ivy Collins, two years old, from Eskdale Valley; John Coates, 64, from Te Karaka; Marie Greene, 59 from Puketapu; George Luke, father of the former Kiwi Issac Luke, who died on the Taihape-Napier Road; Shona Wilson, who passed away, from Tūtira; Helen Street, 86, from Onekawa; Brendan Miller, 43, from Matapiro Road, Hastings; Ian Mclauchlan, 76, from Waiohiki; and Susane Caccioppoli, 55, from Eskdale Valley; and on top of that, the two Muriwai firefighters Dave Van Zwanenberg and Craig Stevens. My heartfelt acknowledgment to the whānau of those that have lost their lives during Cyclone Gabrielle.

This legislation is an omnibus bill which addresses and is the first suite of legislative tools to help those most impacted by Cyclone Gabrielle. It involves amending several of the pieces of legislation that the Minister, the Hon Kieran McAnulty acknowledged: the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act, the Resource Manage Act (RMA), and, of course, the Local Government Act. There are two pieces on this bill that we are debating tonight that come under my purview as the Minister for Food Safety, and those are changes to the Food Act and, of course, introducing some changes around the Food Regulations. And those two pieces as part of this bill is really to acknowledge those businesses who would normally register but due to being cut off cannot, and this gives some guarantee, whether you’re in the Far North, in Auckland, in Te Tai Rāwhiti, or Te Matau-a-Māui that you’ve got some protections as a business operator. So that’s why I’m standing in support of this piece of legislation.

But like many, you know, it is a time to reflect that Gabrielle was a massive event in the history of our country. And if we talk about where we were on the 13th, which is where we got the notice, for those that come from Te Matau-a-Māui—and, of course, as the MP for Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, I go from Wainuiōmata right to the very top of the East Coast. And so the heart of Gabrielle really did impact the epicentre of my electorate, which was from Wairarapa up to the very top of the East Coast.

But I was here, on the 13th, because we were supposed to start back in Parliament on 14 February and, of course, the last flight out of Napier—I’m surprised our flight took off because it was not very good weather. Heoi anō, we loaded and we got to Wellington. Early hours that morning, I took a call from my sister. My sister is currently a resident in Awatoto and she only just got her power on three days ago. So for 28 days—and she’s a resident of Napier—no power. These are the realities of many of our communities that come from Te Matau-a-Māui. But I took the phone call that people were evacuating from our papa kāinga, which is not far from where I live—four families—and that they were going to my home. I live in a place called Whakatū, which is in-between Hastings and Napier.

I said, without doubt, take the whānau to wherever you can to help at this time. I was here about to start Parliament. I have an 85-year-old mum and she would have been beside herself knowing what to do to awhi and manaaki our whānau. So I took the decision to get in my electric car and all the way back to Hawke’s Bay I was wondering, why are you driving into a storm with an electric car? But that’s what you do when you want to get home to loved ones; you take whatever you can and I never thought twice and I jumped in my electric vehicle and I stopped at the Pak’nSave at Porirua and I filled as much stores and supplies into my vehicle, because I knew that where I was going there would have been a huge demand and a calamity, as I discovered when I finally got there.

The normal drive from Hawke’s Bay to Wellington on a good day is about a 3½ hour drive for me. It took me most of the day. I left here at 8 o’clock and I pulled in at home at about 6.30 and I was greeted by a very wet whānau. We’d lost power, we’d lost the phone, and for a week we cooked off the barbecue. I was appreciative that we had the barbecue, because that fed the families they had vacated to my whare. But that was a small price to pay considering the enormity of it for many whānau that were impacted by Gabrielle.

So I do want to acknowledge those first responders. I want to acknowledge the three “Navy SEALs” that came to the rescue of Chris Barber and his brother Philip from Eskdale. When these three Māori fellows turned up on the floatable to rescue Chris and his family, he said to them, “Are you the navy?” And they said, “Nah, we’re just three Māori boys.” So now he calls them his Navy SEALs. Of course, there are many important heroes that tuned up to help. I want to also acknowledge Corporal Storm Harrison and Staff Sergeant Davey Forbes, who were actually commanded to go to a place called Glengarry, which is just west of Puketapu, but they chose to actually go into Eskdale Valley and through that, they ended up saving people.

So in times of great tragedy, the human body that I witnessed and saw firsthand on the ground showed that people put other people’s lives before theirs. And it’s important, while we are debating this important piece of legislation, that we don’t lose sight of the human cost that this storm and this cyclone—and past cyclones and future cyclones—is going to be paid. But the resilience of the community—and I was based in Te Matau-a-Māui, in Hawke’s Bay. For 21 straight days that’s where I based myself to ensure our region had what it needed, because I couldn’t get to Tai Rāwhiti, because the roads were closed. So Hawke’s Bay was where I based myself.

And for all those communities that just rallied, that took care of themselves—and I want to especially acknowledge the marae: the maraes of Waipatu, of Te Aranga, of Omāhu, of Waiohiki, of Tangoio, of Pētane, Moteo, Pukemokimoki. They stood themselves up as welfare centres. They didn’t ask for any money, but just did what they needed to do. And they supported whānau, large whānau, large hapū—Māori, non-Māori, our Pacific whānau. They awhi-ed them all because they needed to be awhi-ed. And I want to acknowledge the enormous effort our marae played in this event.

I want to also acknowledge the iwi around the country that loaded containers and ships of kai and resources and just got them to the areas that they needed to get to. And I want to mihi out to all those iwi that took the time to actually provide support and awhi to those areas that needed it the most. Of course, our regional leaders and councils continue to do enormous work and, of course, our growers and farmers. I want to say that they have been hugely impacted and I know this bill will go some way practically for our growers, our orchardists, actually being able to burn trees that they can no longer use because there’s too much silt and they cannot use them. So they need to ensure that the RMA enables them to do that. For our farmers, getting stock out of isolated places where they’ve got no bridges and no roads, and so they’ve got to cross stock either through waterways or in trucks pulled across waterways—that’s why the changes in this legislation are needed, because practically that’s what our producers, our great food producers from Hawke’s Bay, have asked us for.

I’m pleased to say that we’re taking on that plea and this bill will, hopefully, go some way to ensure that our growers and our producers of good food will be able to return back as quickly as they can through this legislation, which is one of a suite of legislation that will be required to get our communities, to get our nation back up on its feet. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. At the risk of becoming a little biblical, which I don’t normally do, there is a time and place for everything. This is not a time, in my view, for cheap political point-scoring, and certainly the committee stage of this bill tomorrow will not be a time, in my view, for, again, cheap political point-scoring. It’s time for constructive debate, constructive discussion—and I think there’s time for that, and I’ll get on to that in a moment. So I was very disappointed to hear that sort of thing going on in response to what I think is the reason we came to Parliament.

We came to Parliament to make a difference to people’s lives, and to do it, in some cases, as quickly as we possibly can, and that’s exactly what this bill is endeavouring to enable. We can’t go out and fix the things that have been broken—that’s not our role; we can’t do it—but we can enable those things to get fixed and those people’s lives to be put back together as quickly as we can. That’s the whole aim of this type of legislation. I think, as a Parliament, we should be very pleased to be part of that, and I think we should constructively work our way through in the next 36 hours to make this bill as good as we possibly can. I’m very pleased to be involved in that and have the opportunity to chair the select committee that’s going to run that process through.

And just as another point before I get into the things I want to discuss, I was really interested in Debbie Ngarewa-Packer’s point about iwi. They certainly have had and will have the opportunity to submit on this bill, and numerous iwi organisations have been written to and offered that opportunity; I’m sure they will take that up.

So I think that the feedback we get tomorrow, in the course of those discussions, will be very constructive. I realise the time constraints are significant and some people won’t be able to submit, simply because of that. But none the less, I think we’ll get a very good amount of feedback and I think it will work really well.

The whole aim of this bill—and it’s been mentioned plenty of times in the House tonight, and I don’t really need to go there, but I will very briefly—is to make things much easier for people to put things back together, to pull things apart, and to repair the damage that’s been done.

I think, as we go through this, there’s been enormous trauma on a large number of people right throughout New Zealand, and I think we should acknowledge that. I know Meka Whaitiri did acknowledge that in her speech, and I think that’s a very important part of where we get to with all this stuff.

I was the mayor of the Manawatū at the time of the 2004 floods and would have dearly loved a piece of legislation like this. We didn’t think quite as forwardly in those days as we do now. A piece of legislation like this would have enabled things to happen probably much quicker in the long run.

In response to some of the comment that I’ve heard tonight, I’ve never seen a farmer reluctant to come forward and fix things. Whether they were legally allowed to fix them or not, they’ll fix them and they’ll worry about the response later. I have seen pretty big tractors come out on the road and clear the road in five seconds and worry about the consequences later. I think, on the whole, New Zealanders are pretty much like that. I think, interestingly, our legal system has got more tolerant of that sort of behaviour, because when you live in remote parts of New Zealand, isolated, you don’t have much choice. Some of you would have seen the picture of grapes coming through a river today on the back of a massive great big tractor—well, they’ve got to get them out somehow. I think that’s exactly what this piece of legislation is about: enabling that sort of thing to happen legally and allowing them to get on with life and do what they need to do to make it happen.

I was very interested in—Louise Upston, actually, raised the issue of a piece of legislation like this becoming permanent so that Governments have access to it in the future for future events. Clearly, this piece of legislation can’t become permanent; it’s not designed in that manner at all. But it would be really interesting for the Parliament of the future to look into a piece of legislation that could be plucked off the shelf at a day’s notice, because this is very similar to the legislation put in place—with different wording around the fact that this, of course, is a flood, not an earthquake—to deal with the Kaikōura-Hurunui earthquake. I think it’s well worth considering, for future parliaments, the potential to put in place a piece of legislation that could be plucked off the shelf instantly, and it would have alleviated some of the challenge that Louise Upston was talking about in her discussion on this issue.

I want to acknowledge Minister McAnulty and all that have contributed to getting this piece of legislation to where it’s got to. As I said earlier, the select committee will give it a great deal of consideration. I think the legislation itself, as has been mentioned, is not all that complicated; it’s quite a small piece of legislation, relatively simply, but none the less, there are some improvements that may well be made to it, and, hopefully, the submitters will put those to the select committee tomorrow and enable us, if there is reason to change some small bits of this legislation, to do so.

There will be many people who can’t be helped, I guess, by this piece of legislation. One of the things that I’ve noticed in the top end of my electorate, and certainly in Louise Upston’s electorate, is the massive damage to forestry that’s been done—literally thousands of hectares of forestry just smashed up as though it doesn’t exist. There was no rain of significance in that area, but the winds as a result of the storm have done immense damage to those forests. That’s going to take ages to clean up. There will be some recoverable out of it, but not much. So there’s many, many people that have suffered damage in the course of this event right throughout New Zealand that will never recover all of what they’ve lost, and we can’t hope to put that in place in this House either.

We heard from Minister Wood about his plans to repair roads and infrastructure and to get those operating as quickly as possible. Whilst it seems sensible to attempt to build back better—as we’ve heard that terminology a little bit in the course of this—it’s almost impossible to build back better instantly, because the urgency is to get the road open and to get the house fixed and to get all those things fixed so that people can get on with their lives as quickly as possible. The interesting thing about building back better is that we as a country have got to do a whole lot of work on that because we’ve never really done that work. I’d urge, again, Governments of the future to get on with that job pretty quickly; we can’t do it in the course of recovering from an event like this. That’s got to come later.

I think the really interesting issues that are going to come out of this—and this legislation will again help with that—are decisions around what houses you do fix and what you don’t, what rebuilding we allow and what we don’t, and the other really interesting thing, I think, is when you start to rebuild flood banks or stopbanks, to what level of protection you want to rebuild those to and what the long-term prognosis of rebuilding those stopbanks is going to be. After the 2004 floods in the Manawatū, Palmerston North decided they would run their stopbanks up to a 200-year return period for floods—pretty significant. Interestingly, the recent rain tested a fair bit of that, so we know it works. The problem with that, of course, is you end up like the challenges they had in America, where the stopbanks get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and then where do you go? So there are some big issues like that.

But there are all sorts of solutions that can be put in place to, I guess, alleviate those problems. One of the really big challenges that particularly Hawke’s Bay has—and I know that probably better than the other areas because I have a daughter, some grandchildren, a brother, and a sister all living there; fortunately, not badly affected by this—is that it has some of the most fertile land we’ve got in New Zealand; some of the most highly productive land we’ve got. We can’t really afford to lose it. So we’ve got to find a way of mitigating those challenges. We certainly can’t afford to lose them, nor can the people that live there.

So it’s really important that we not only put the legislation in place to enable the quick recovery, which is what this legislation will do—and some of it might be quicker than necessary. Michael Woodhouse touched on some dates earlier that I think we’ll probably need to look at as a select committee—or may well need to look at as a select committee, as well. But it’s important that we get that in place but it’s equally as important that we get the longer-term planning done as to where we go in the future with this stuff, because there’s no question that all this has happened before, we just didn’t have the built environments we now have around these areas. So when the floods in the 1930s and the 1920s, or whatever, happened, we didn’t have that massive built environment that then caught the water and created a lot of the damage that’s happening now.

So there are some big challenges for all of our regions that are affected by this. There’s certainly some big challenges for our cities that have been affected by it, and particularly Auckland and, of course, Scott Simpson’s very beloved Coromandel. But I think this piece of legislation is really good. Hopefully, tomorrow we can put it in a slightly better place than the Minister’s brought it to us—but who’s to know that? But that’s all I’ve got to say on it, and I look forward to what we get through in the next couple of days.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The people of Hawke’s Bay are not interested in politics right now. What they’re interested in—and what they’re seeking—is leadership, and support, and progress to enable us to move forward and start repairing the horrendous damage that has been seen across our region.

I’ve lived in Hawke’s Bay all my life. My family was there on the day of the storm, and I was here in Wellington. I didn’t actually get to speak to my family till late in the evening, where they managed to get me a 15-second phone call to say, “We’re OK.” I think that, for me, really put into perspective how serious and significant this was for friends, family, whānau, and people across Hawke’s Bay, because everyone in Hawke’s Bay knows everybody in some way. We’re well connected.

So in the morning, when I hoped to get home, I heard the news that Hastings and Napier, for the first time, were completely cut off from each other—twin cities that were split up. So I packed a backpack, bought a waterproof raincoat at the airport, and got on the flight and thought, “Gee, I might have to ask Stuart Nash if I can stay with him for a couple of days because I might not be able to get home.”

As I got off the plane, I was one of the first off and I saw Jimmy Guerin, a private helicopter pilot. He was on the tarmac and he saw me and he said, “Anna, do you need a ride home?” And I said, “Thank you.” With that, the aircraft crew came up and said, “Have you got a helicopter?” And I said, “No, Jimmy has.” And they said, “Well look, we’ve got all this blood and supplies that needs to get to Hawke’s Bay Hospital.” So we were able to do something so quick. It was really significant, but enough to make us know that we were helping out.

When I got up on that helicopter with Jimmy and he started to talk about what had happened in the last 24 hours, and seeing what I saw, I had no idea how we were going to even begin to do the work that we have to do—there was just so much water. And this is what this bill is about.

It is about starting to get the progress in a pragmatic way to enable Hawke’s Bay and other regions to start connecting back. One of the most important things that I can bring to the House is to talk about those communities who have helped each other. Communities have helped communities from day dot, when there were no communications; when people had no way to talk to each other. People just had to do what they had to do.

I heard stories from helicopter pilots literally flying from one house to the other, where they would have people on their roofs saying, “Don’t fly,” waving them and saying, “Go there,” because they knew that at the house up the road, there were people in more danger than they were.

I heard how, at the end of the night—when it went dark and they had to stop flying—they were leaving people, knowing that there were people still waiting to be rescued. I can’t even begin to imagine what that was like for those people. We’re talking about older people, we’re talking about families, we’re talking about people who had to hold babies above their heads and walk out to save themselves. But so many people saved themselves, and it is heartbreaking and a time to acknowledge those who have lost their lives—and to their family and whānau who have lost loved ones. But I cannot, still, comprehend how we saved so many people and how many people rescued each other. And that is still something that I think Hawke’s Bay is coming to terms with: how many people we could have lost, but we didn’t.

I just want to acknowledge that, with these isolated communities, there have been Hawke’s Bay heroes. There have been people who have stepped up in leadership, who have done so because they knew that they had to do something. A woman, Isabelle Crawshaw, who has worked relentlessly building with her community and keeping everybody feeling connected, talked about having to say goodbye to her two little children, who were safe but they went and stayed with her mum, so she could get on with looking after everybody around Pātoka. It’s those human stories, where we all are connected in some way, that I think will be shared stories for years and years to come.

I wanted also just to talk about when you are on the ground as local MPs, or, for the MPs that have come in from other parties—and I do acknowledge that too. We do have a job to do, but the job to do is to listen, to bring that information to the House so that we can make better decisions. I visited a grower, in the weekend. They asked me to come out and see them in the Dartmoor area. He’d been a grower for 46 years, and he’s lost everything. He’d be lucky to harvest 10 percent of his apple crop. He was one of the first squash growers in New Zealand, and a kiwifruit grower. And, through all of his devastation, Danny Bearsley said to me, “I want to show you something.” He said, “Look over there,” and he pointed to an area of his farm that had been a maize paddock. And he said, “I reckon this is one of the best places we could dump silt, and I’d suggested that to the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council a couple of weeks ago. But there was a lot going on, and now I’m looking to talk with the regional council this week. We could build a massive hill out of it, but it’s a great place for it.” It’s pragmatic, practical solutions from people on the ground with industry knowledge who are going to come up with ways to help others.

I think, as a local MP, it’s my duty to make sure that when these solutions come up, we champion them, and we make sure that we help growers in the best way possible to get rid of what is a massive, massive, daunting problem. The silt, it is just kilometres and kilometres of it, so I am really pleased that when you meet someone like Danny, even while he’s facing those tough, tough times—Danny, you absolutely think about others as well.

And I’d also like to mention a couple of other growers who have opened their property up to people from all over political parties so that they can come in and they can see the damage. That’s Des and Lesley Wilson. Again, their property has been completely smashed. She talks about—and I think it’s important to hear this—when she woke up, at three minutes past six, she could walk on her lawn, and thought, “Gee, we’ve got over with a few fallen-over trees.” Within 30 minutes, the water was up to here [puts hand to chest]—30 minutes. She turned around and suddenly saw that it had dropped a few inches, and the water started going down. But that’s because the Pātoka bridge down the road had absolutely wiped out. It is at that speed that the water hit, and we have a duty, at speed now, to do everything we can do to help build back and come back and do more for Hawke’s Bay and the other regions. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

The question is, That the Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Bill be considered by the Governance and Administration Committee.

Bill referred to the Governance and Administration Committee.

Instruction to Governance and Administration Committee