Severe Weather Emergency RECOVERY Legislation Bill

I move, That the Severe Weather Emergency Recovery Legislation Bill be now read a third time.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank submitters who considered the bill in such a short time. Even though the consultation phase was short, the bill has undoubtedly been improved. I also want to acknowledge the Governance and Administration Committee for their collegial approach, their careful consideration of the views of submitters, and the thoughtful recommendations they made.

This omnibus bill will support and provide relief to local authorities and communities in those areas affected by the recent severe weather events in the North Island. The bill supports these areas as they shift towards recovery efforts by providing the flexibility to speed up those efforts through the use of Orders in Council. The bill also sets out safeguards to ensure this flexibility is used sensibly. The bill also sits alongside the recently passed Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Act as part of the broader Government support package for affected communities.

The Government has accepted the vast majority of the Governance and Administration Committee’s recommendations and incorporated them into the bill through a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP). I wish to take a few minutes to run through the most significant of these changes. I think it is important to briefly outline these changes for the House, since there wasn’t an opportunity to do so during the second reading of the bill.

Firstly, I want to talk about the Severe Weather Events Recovery Review Panel. Under the bill as introduced, the Minister responsible for cyclone recovery or the associate must consider appointing members with specific experience and expertise, such as in the law, environment, protection, climate change, local Māori interests, and other community interests in the affected area. SOP 348 amended the membership of the panel by expanding the knowledge and expertise of its membership. The SOP broadened the specified areas of experience and expertise by adding in health protection, primary industries, and emergency resilience. To me, these additions will only make the panel more effective in its role of scrutinising draft Orders in Council.

The bill as introduced also required the Minister to consult the Regulations Review Committee, or each leader of the political party represented in the present or previous Parliament, if that is not practicable. The SOP clarified that party political leaders are only intended to be consulted during an interregnum when Parliament has been dissolved or has expired and that this requirement only applies to leaders in the most recent Parliament. I should note that for any Orders in Council proposed to add more Acts to the list of legislation in Schedule 2 of the bill, I have opted to retain the test requiring the unanimous or near unanimous support of political party leaders. I consider this test is often used in the House Business Committee and does not need to be specified in this bill.

This SOP also allows relevant Ministers to extend the time frame for the Regulations Review Committee to provide comments on draft Orders in Council, which is within three working days, as currently set out in the bill. I think this is a sensible amendment and it will provide additional time for the committee to scrutinise the draft Orders in Council.

The SOP also addresses a point the committee and submitters raised by reiterating that Orders in Council are to be no broader than geographically necessary. Keeping the scope of any orders tight in this way will help ensure the powers are not exercised beyond where they need to be.

As I mentioned during the second reading debate, I would again like to extend an invitation for an appropriate select committee to conduct a review of the powers contained in the bill. I think this will be a really useful exercise, given the short time frame in which the bill has progressed. I also think a post-enactment review by a select committee will go some way to addressing the concerns raised by submitters. The select committee process will complement the ability of the courts to review ministerial decisions about the making of orders, reflecting the valuable and ongoing contribution that independent processes operating by convention can provide.

Lastly, I am appreciative of the efforts of this House for considering this bill within truncated time frames. Despite this constraint, there were many considered and intelligent views on points of debate in the bill during the committee of the whole House stage. I appreciate the cross-party support in this House for supporting the best recovery efforts possible to meet the needs of affected communities.

I want to take the opportunity to acknowledge the efforts put in by officials and by clerks and the select committee team—many people here at Parliament and through agencies that have worked incredibly hard in a short period of time to work with the committee, incorporate its recommendations, working with officials to come up with something that I think this Parliament should be pretty proud of, given the circumstances.

This bill will facilitate Aotearoa’s recovery from the recent severe weather events and help our communities bounce back to being their vibrant, best selves. I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It gives me some pleasure to speak on this bill, but no pleasure on behalf of the people affected by it—because clearly, the events and the tragic effect it will have on those people’s lives for quite some time to come will be felt by them. And I think that this bill will go some way to alleviating some of those fears for them.

I was just thinking, as I was thinking about the time of the day, that if we could use this bill to short circuit the Ōtaki to north of Levin bypass road, I’d get home an hour quicker tonight—so seeing as I can’t, I might as well stand here talking, because it’s going to take me—

💬 Hon Member: No!

Ha, ha! Clearly that won’t be used for that purpose, Mr Speaker.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: The opening of the road might be more desirable, Mr McKelvie, but carry on.

There’s no magic solution to this, to recovering from these types of disasters, and the National Party fully supports the Minister’s objectives in passing this bill. We’re confident that the bill will make a difference, and we’re also very mindful of the fact that we’re going into an election time, and that could very well be a different Minister in six months’ time running this process. So I think we had to put in place a process that could work for all, and make sure that those who may or may not have to take over at any stage in the future have the opportunity to progress the activities that the Government of the day initiates.

Many decisions can’t be made in a hurry in these sort of events, and we’ve had discussions today about retreat. These sort of decisions can’t be made until other decisions have been made as to what you repair and what you don’t—and I mean, the most obvious example of this is flood banks: if you’re not going to rebuild flood banks, then you’re going have to retreat a whole lot of people. If you are going to rebuild flood banks, then you’ve got to consider how you rebuild the infrastructure inside those flood banks. I think I’ve said before in this House that the example of Palmerston North’s a very good one, where the flood banks were built to a to a 200-year return period standard after the 2004 event, and they’ve worked beautifully. And I think, if you think about the Hawke’s Bay, these decisions are going to have to be made long before any other decisions can be made around retreat. Also, those decisions, on the whole, are made by communities, whereas whether you rebuild your house or not—or rebuild your business or not—is generally going to be made in partnership with the insurance company and yourselves, or the individuals. And so there’s many different ways these decisions are going to be made. And the reason for the longer, I guess, period this bill operates for, is that some of these decisions won’t be made in a hurry, and they just can’t be. So that’s the need for the bill to be extended and to run on for some five or six years in some cases, and the Orders in Council especially.

I also want to acknowledge the Minister and the work of the select committee, basically, for acknowledging the need to take this issue further—and I think that’s where the select committee inquiry will be extremely useful to future Parliaments, because I think if we do run a select committee inquiry, or a select committee runs it, then that inquiry will turn up a whole lot of the groundwork that’s required to put an Act in place in the future to act as a base for these types of disasters. As I said earlier, you’ll never get that base to be entirely transferrable; it’ll have to always be altered. But at least if the base is there, then I think submitters—and people are interested in what we do in Parliament—will have a lot more confidence; so at least we’ve got that part of work right, consulted on, and everyone’s had an opportunity to be part of it.

I just want to speak briefly—because there’s been some mention of this as well that all of these Orders in Council are going to have to be accompanied by funding. That’s a decision that can’t be made until the magnitude of the work required as a result of the Order in Council is understood, and that’s work for future governance—well, it’s work that’s required to be done in the future, because you can’t put in place the funding matters until you understand the magnitude of the need, and so I think these Orders in Council will almost all require Government funding as we move forward. That will be decided as we go along.

So, from the National Party’s perspective, we are very confident that this bill is as good as we could have got it, and as I said earlier—and I want to reiterate it—I have no fears that the seemingly extraordinary powers that we’re granting to Ministers and to the executive will be abused. I’m confident local communities will benefit greatly from the enactment of the legislation, and it also means that their infrastructure and all those sorts of things will be expedited in a much more measured fashion than they otherwise might have been. I think that we can be confident that we’ve made the right decision, and I guess we can only hope that those communities that are affected by this recover as quickly as possible. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

We certainly agree with the last statement by Mr McKelvie, that the Green Party hopes that the communities recover as quickly as possible. But also, he made the point that big decisions take a while. It’s important that big decisions such as the investment in stop banks, where new infrastructure goes, and what sort of infrastructure it is do take a while and that they engage the community strongly in making them, because it is the community that uses them and the community generally contributes funding. So the Local Government Act is one of the Acts in the Schedule that can be changed by Order in Council. We really encourage the Government to ensure that there isn’t too much truncation of the consultative procedures under that Act so that the community is really engaged.

In Christchurch, there was a district plan that went through a very expedited process under the Resource Management Act (RMA) to enable consents to be granted quickly, and the quarrying provisions in that plan, because they are so permissive because of the need for quarry materials in the reconstruction, have been an ongoing source of conflict with residents because of the effects of quarries not having adequate setbacks from residential areas, the health effects, the amenity effects from dust from those quarries. That is just one example of where a quick decision was made—a poor planning decision because it didn’t take account of the community’s needs and it put the needs of rebuilding to the fore. So people are suffering because of that. That’s why processes exist: to ensure that different aspects of the decision are examined and that as much information as possible can contribute to good decisions.

We also encourage the Government—others have talked about the big infrastructure projects, which are going to be required as part of the recovery. The Reserves Act is one of the pieces of legislation that could be subject to Order in Council to modify the permission processes relating to infrastructure reconstruction on reserves managed by Te Papa Atawhai Department of Conservation. We have a biodiversity crisis. There are significant impacts, often on indigenous vegetation and habitat, and we’d really encourage Ministers, when they’re looking at the scale of projects that will go through and be allowed by an Order in Council, to think about the potential impacts on nature and whether it’s appropriate that some big projects with a scope for big impacts go through the normal RMA and Conservation Act and Reserves Act processes to ensure that those effects are properly managed.

Similarly, there’s an ability to have an Order in Council for the Resource Management Act. Officials say that it may be around waiving the requirements to exclude stock for waterways, given the destruction of fences. That is all very sensible in those immediate areas where fences have been destroyed. But given that the Orders in Council can apply across the whole of the geographic area affected by severe weather, we don’t want to see those really hard-won requirements to get stock out of streams to protect waterway health wound back over any greater area where the properties’ fences have actually been destroyed. So the Green Party will be watching the Orders in Council closely. We do hope that a cross-party—more of a political group—forum is set up, not just the select committee review process, given the length of time that the bill will be in place once it becomes an Act.

We are pleased that there have been some more safeguards inserted in through the select committee process, which, once again, establishes that public submissions and select committee scrutiny always improves legislation. This Parliament is one of the fastest lawmakers in the West, and we still think that things could have been brought back to the whole of the Parliament, rather than just done through executive power, because of that public scrutiny that you get through the select committee.

As well as thanking officials, we’d particularly like to thank the Office of the Clerk, the very helpful assistance the office provided in options for increasing parliamentary scrutiny, one of which made it into the bill, and the work that legislative counsel does in advising the Regulations Review Committee, which will have another increase in its workload—as it did with the COVID legislation—in scrutinising these Orders in Council. The advice that legislative counsel provides to that committee is a critical part of its work.

The Green Party, as I’ve said in earlier speeches, is not supporting this because of the extent of executive powers, the broad-purpose ability to add new Acts through an Order in Council, but there have been some improvements through this process.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The ACT Party said we would work constructively with the Government on severe weather response legislation. On the first bill that was introduced to this House, over a month ago, we did work constructively with the Government and on the select committee and were happy to be able to nudge some changes. But it didn’t go far enough. What ACT was seeking, in fact, was an economic development plan and a significant liberalisation of the environmental rules, of the labour rules, and other constraints on rebuilding in places hit by severe weather. But ACT can’t support this bill, because of the “Henry VIII” powers that it gives Ministers in this Government and even a future Government, which, as the Hon Gerry Brownlee pointed out, might even involve an ACT Minister like me. We don’t think it’s acceptable for a Minister to have the powers that this bill confers on that Minister. But, again, Labour, in all its wisdom, believes that that’s what it needs. But why?

It’s been three months since Cyclone Hale, just after New Year 2023; 2½ months since West Auckland was flooded and Pīhā and Muriwai devastated by slips and flooding; and two months since Cyclone Gabrielle. We still don’t know what Labour would do to assist the recovery—we don’t know; it’s not clear. They’ve sent Sir Brian Roche and a task force. I would assume he’s lost up some metal road in Hawke’s Bay, because we haven’t heard from him! And the Minister, the Hon Kieran McAnulty, wasn’t prepared to say what he has found and what he has recommended to the Government. It would be really interesting and ACT would support a briefing into what Sir Brian Roche and the recovery task force have found, and how that might inform recovery.

We’ve heard a little bit from the Minister today that he’s considering bespoke legislation which would allow for the Government to value people’s land when it takes it off them if it says they can’t live somewhere any more. That’s what they call “managed retreat.” Well, ACT said, “Look, the Public Works Act has a formula. It’s fair. People understand it. If you disagree with it, you can go to court and litigate it.” But, instead, the Government is going to come up with its own formula, apparently. They’re going to make it up, and there’s going to be three days for the panel of experts to review it.

Then I want to come to managed retreat and where the Green Party is in this managed retreat debate, because, while we have had some very positive contributions from the Green Party, from the Hon Eugenie Sage, when it comes to pointing out flaws and suggesting amendments to the bill, what is completely missing is the climate adaptation Act that the climate Minister, Green Minister James Shaw, was supposed to introduce. Apparently it’s coming. Well, it would have been very helpful if there was already a piece of legislation which said how New Zealand might respond to sea-level rise, to ongoing flooding, and to other natural hazards. But despite a climate emergency being declared by Labour and Green MPs and Ministers, saying we’ve only got one more year—or two or three or four more years—before the planet burns, we still have no idea what they think climate adaptation should look like. But the Green Party will continue to offer solutions around that that actually don’t help. What ACT will do will is offer practical solutions when it comes to working out formulas and actually adapting to climate change by funding, financing, and building infrastructure.

I just want to come very briefly to who wins from this piece of legislation. Well, clearly, the officials, who will be able to draft Orders in Council and won’t have to subject their proposed policy changes or changes to legislation to parliamentary scrutiny. The officials will win, and Government Ministers who are floundering around and still have no idea how they’re going to actually craft a response to those farmers, to those people in Hawke’s Bay whose land is covered in silt, to the pack houses who’ve had all their equipment destroyed, who have no apples to process—we have no idea, and they have no idea, what economic response, what support, what wage support, what capital support, what loan support might be available to them. They’re not just living in limbo; some of them are losing hope. As the farming representative Charlie Reynolds said this morning, they feel they’ve been abandoned, and the ACT Party says it’s unacceptable 2½ months since Cyclone Hale.

I just want to come, finally, to the people of Marlborough. This legislation covers a whole lot of regions, but it excludes Marlborough, and the Marlborough District Council and others, including engineers, submitted that actually Marlborough is the test case. Their roads were devastated. There are large areas of the Marlborough Sounds where jetties were decimated in floods and storms in 2022. And yet they are suffering under the same impenetrable red tape—the Resource Management Act—having to ask and beg for permission from a whole range of people in order to rebuild infrastructure. They’re also limited by the funding constraints that the New Zealand Transport Agency imposes on local councils in terms of what they can use money for from the Land Transport Fund. And Marlborough said we’d love some recognition, we’d love some support with our recovery, but we’re not included and our storm was just as bad.

I think that really signals how important it is that we move from a knee-jerk reaction, as this Government has done—supposedly great crisis managers, although the crisis manager in chief has just quit and gone off to the UN or some other country. But, look, what we really need is not knee-jerk crisis managers, we need a well-designed piece of recovery legislation as proposed by the New Zealand Initiative, and that would include establishing a recovery agency and a framework within which it would be much simpler and quicker to respond in the face of these—no doubt—emergencies we will face, whether it’s an earthquake, or a tsunami, or a volcano, or whatever it is.

So the ACT Party supports the submission that New Zealand Initiative made. And what we will also be seeking from the Minister is a briefing on the work that Sir Brian Roche and the task force has undertaken, because it will be very helpful for all parties in the House to understand what’s going on there.

We’ll also continue to advocate for property rights. We believe it’s important that people whose land might be taken by the Government or by councils, supposedly in the name of managed retreat, have the right to a fair assessment and a rapid assessment of their needs and of the value of their property if they’re to be told they can’t live there anymore. The people of West Auckland—the organisation West Auckland is Flooding—have been begging for a formula that enables people in their community, where they can’t return to their homes, to move on, and the ACT Party would urge the Government to get on with that. And we look forward to working constructively with the Government on what a fair formula might be.

But the ACT Party can’t support this piece of legislation. We won’t be supporting it today, but we encourage the Government to get on with the recovery, and to include all parties in the House in the method for doing that.

The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 2 May 2023. Thank you for your efforts this week, ladies and gentlemen, and enjoy Easter.

The House adjourned at 5.07 p.m.