Emergency Management Bill (No 2)

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, it gives me real pleasure to rise on behalf of ACT and take a short call on the Emergency Management Bill (No 2). I want to thank the Minister for Emergency Management and Recovery for his kind acknowledgment of my ACT colleagues. Again, this bill is supported across the House, and as the Minister outlined, it actually builds on work over a number of successive Governments, and it’s had great input, both from members across this House and also those involved in the sector.

It is providing a new, modern framework. It’s going to ensure that we have the right level of community involvement and, also, that the lines of demarcation for responsibilities, etc., are clear and that actually we have an effective way for dealing with emergency management situations in New Zealand. I’m not going to traverse all the ground that the Minister and other speakers have covered again, but I just say ACT does commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Thanks, Mr Speaker. I’m delighted to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take also a brief call in support of this bill. First of all, I just wanted to say that we all recognise that emergencies are a major issue across this country. Whether it’s earthquakes, firestorms, whatever—we treat it seriously here, and I think that is a good thing, and it’s great to see that bipartisan support across the House for this.

Minister, in introducing it—and thank you for the work that you do—you mentioned being proactive about some of these things, and two of the things—and you did encourage me to mention these, so I will briefly. Being proactive is not just responding to emergencies, it’s being proactive about emergencies. One of the things local government particularly asked for is to say, “Look, can we link together better emergency management and, particularly, land-use planning?”, and we’ve done that. I was pleased to be able to persuade colleagues that clause 43A should be in there so that, when you’ve got your planning hat on—and you’ve got to think about it with your emergency management hat on as well—that hopefully will stop us building dumb things in dumb places quite as often as we do.

The other one, which you also mentioned, Minister, was, when there’s an actual event going on, the ability to be able to say, “Look, something’s going to go wrong here; can we get in there early and clean it up before it happens?” I think of the Wairau River bar, I think of Lake Forsyth, and I think of Lake Ellesmere, where flooding has occurred because we got in too late. Dealing with those things and giving people protection against liability in that situation is, I think, a really good step forward, and it was great to be able, again, to persuade the committee about clause 202 to do that, and you strengthened that further. That’s something the contractors in particular asked for.

Finally, I just wanted to say that it was also great to get in there the recognition that mayors asked for as well. We had those big storms in October of last year. We were in that period just after the election; they weren’t sworn in yet, but they’d have liked to actually take responsibility of their own communities and declare those emergencies. We’ve given that power there, as well.

I just want to finish off by saying thanks to all the officials—I know you’ve mentioned Beth and Jeremy, but all the officials there, Minister, and also the submitters, the committee that did a great job, I think, all the people who do all that great work, paid and unpaid. I also just wanted to pay tribute to you, too, for the way in which you engaged with the committee—you engaged with the committee all the time, not just in this bill, but also in Estimates, etc.,—and the great work that you do around the country in responding with skill, empathy, and knowledge to communities when they’re facing stress. With delight, I commend this bill to the House.

E te Pīka, tēnā koe. I rise on behalf of Te Pāti Māori, firstly to acknowledge the Minister for all the effort and all the mahi that he’s put in to ensure that we have the right set of policy settings here in this bill that we’ve just debated in the Chamber, and now we speak to the third reading. I also want to give rise to the voice of my colleague Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, who has been actively involved in the redesign, but also in consulting directly with the Minister on behalf of Te Pāti Māori, and the people of Hauraki-Waikato, who have experienced, just this year alone, a series of different emergency call-outs, but also being in a state of emergency. There are the experiences of my colleague, and actually every member of Te Pāti Māori. I’m thinking about our co-leaders, who have also, over the last three years, had to deal with, at face value and on the ground, the realities of climate change—but I’m also thinking of emergency responses with little to no resources. That is Te Tairāwhiti, Te Tai Hauāuru, even Te Tai Tonga.

I reflect on a moment when I was still reporting as a journalist the Kaikōura earthquakes, and being called out to that, being a part of that. I actually went down seven days after the earthquake, and on that seventh day I noticed one thing. There was no one around. The cameras had all left, the reporters had all left, the support had left, but the money was still going through. Who was left on the ground? It was the aunties and uncles, the 1 percent of ahi kā that remained on the ground connected to the marae, that opened their doors—without waiting for warning or without waiting for anybody to ask.

We know, and it’s been said time and time again in this House, marae are the first responders on the ground when there is a state of emergency. They never close their doors, ever—and that is the key point, and the reason why we could not support the bill today in its current state, because it does not extend far enough. That is the direct consultation and kōrero that has come to Te Pāti Māori from each of our electorates. It is great that there is a bipartisan approach to this. It is amazing that we can, as politicians, as the elected members of Parliament for each of our parties, but also our rohe, where we can come together and actually take it seriously, the solutions and the kōrero that needs to be had to reach a place where we can agree without regret.

Today, it was really hard to support everything, knowing that our whānau are still behind the middle line. We have asked, time and time again: do not lock Māori out of decision-making processes. I know there are parts in this bill that reflect Māori will be there. However, the real stories we’re hearing on the ground, Minister, and Mr Speaker, is that it doesn’t actually eventuate. It’s written in black and white, but it’s not actually practised. There are no practices that are prioritising Māori when it comes to communications, when it comes to not just making decisions, but having a wānanga—consulting on what’s best for the people in those rohe. For instance, Waipā. The Waipā River was inundated, it was flooded. For quite an extended period of time, the people on the ground—the aunties, the uncles—had no idea who to talk to. It always led back to marae. The councils weren’t talking. The communications had failed miserably on the ground for an extended period of time. Our reasons for opposing parts of these bills, and the bill in its entirety, is because we believe that Māori are still behind the eight ball, are not funded or resourced properly, and there’s discussion that Māori should be reimbursed after the fact when we don’t have money to afford to look after everybody, but we know how to pull out and come together. It is always in a state of emergency where you see kotahitanga, and Māori do that brilliantly. We want all of Aotearoa to do that brilliantly, but we cannot do that if we’re not all equally considered and valued.

[Authorised reo Māori text to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]

[Authorised translation to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]

We oppose this bill, but we thank the Minister for his mahi.

I rise in support of this bill on behalf of the Green Party. I must say that this is a really good bill. It’s not perfect, but it’s important not to let perfect get in the way of good. I just want to talk to a few points that have been raised along this process.

Firstly, I want to talk around the disability sector. This is to the amendment that I did put forward to the committee of the whole House, which was ensuring that, as a right, someone from the disability community sector was a member of the emergency management coordinating group; one of their roles is to oversee the implementation, development, maintenance, monitoring, and evaluation of the regional management plan. While there’s the ability for other people to be co-opted on to the group, it was our belief that, actually, the disability community should have someone there as a right. It reminds me of their tagline: “Nothing about us without us”. While we know that people with disabilities are more vulnerable and are at the heart of a lot of this bill, the fact that they don’t sit on some of these coordinating groups—management groups—is actually quite a shame. I think they need to be involved when decisions are being made that affect them, because they have the most expertise in that area.

Another point I wanted to talk about, and was just mentioned before, is around marae. We do know that marae open their doors every time there is a disaster. We saw through the select committee phase in the submissions, the numerous submissions that we saw, around direct reimbursement for marae. It was a shame that I put an amendment through select committee and through committee of the whole House—which was voted down both times—to ensure that it would be in legislation that marae would be reimbursed from the Government, from the Crown. Unfortunately, that did not happen, and it relies on a policy setting. I find that’s a shame, and a risk, and it should have been put into the legislation.

The other thing I just want to talk about briefly is around local government, and the role of local government, and, more importantly, the role of risk reduction. I know we focus a lot on being ready and responding, but obviously one of the most important things we can do is look at risk reduction. Earlier this year, the Climate Change Commission pointed out that 97 percent of the Government spend on natural hazards since 2010 is on responding to and recovering from disasters, and only 3 percent has gone into reducing the risk.

The cost is obviously in the billions. If we really want to look to the future, and look to reduce costs, we need to ensure that we do risk reduction. Throughout the bill, it is framed as cost-effective risk reduction, and we know a lot of that work will fall on to local government. At the same time, that local government is going through significant reform, with the potential of rates capping. Capping rates will impact communities into the future when risk reduction is not done properly. I urge, as we move forward, to ensure that local government has the ability to work in partnership with central government to ensure important risk reduction is carried out, so communities into the future don’t have to suffer what other communities have been suffering with improper risk reduction.

I’d like to just quickly mention a wee note from one of the submissions, from former Mayor of Ōtautahi, the Hon Lianne Dalziel. She said that although it’s accepted that managing the risk from hazards to an acceptable level requires actions across the four Rs—risk reduction, readiness, response, and recovery—the focus constantly remains on readiness and response. This means there’s no clarity around the roles and responsibility when it comes to risk reduction and recovery. While I’ve just touched previously on risk reduction, I think it’s also important to look past recovery, and to ensure the lessons that are learnt don’t just sit on shelves—that they’re implemented across the country, so that when an event happens at the bottom of the South Island, what is learnt from that event helps someone at the top of the North Island. I hope that happens through this bill.

Thank you, sir. It’s a great bill. I’d like to make just two short points. Firstly, clause 39, on co-ordinating executive groups: much has been made of the mandatory inclusion of iwi Māori—a good thing—but can I also just acknowledge the mandatory inclusion of our rural communities, who are, actually, really important in these crises, and also ambulance officers. I think many Kiwis would be surprised to know that ambulance officers weren’t included. I’d like to just acknowledge the great work that the Wellington Free Ambulance and St John Ambulance and all our ambulance staff and paramedics do.

Finally, the Minister acknowledged all the staff and officials who have worked on it. Can I just give a shout-out to Mr Bailey Pellow, who’s in the gallery and has done great work on this bill, particularly helping coordinate across the House to get agreement from almost every party on this. I commend the bill to the House.

💬 SPEAKER: That’s a little unusual—particularly the bit about him working so hard!

This legislation is long overdue. The law governing much of our emergency management system was passed in 2002, and, as Kieran McAnulty mentioned, we’ve learned a lot a lot of lessons since then, particularly since the Christchurch quakes. And I’d just like to touch on some of my own experience back then.

I remember when those quakes hit. My son was about six days old at the time, and I was a young soldier. We got the call to go out to Burnham Military Camp to get trucks ready, and we were given a pretty simple order. It was: the police station was closed, everything’s closed, we don’t know who’s in charge, so we’ve got to go in there and do something about it; we don’t actually know what we need to do. I remember we assembled on the 2nd/1st Battalion parade ground. We got the trucks ready, we loaded up water, we loaded up ration packs, we loaded up just anything that we could grab out of our low cost hangers, and we went in there and set up cordons and found a police officer. We asked, “Where do you want us?” They said, “Look, just wherever.” We ended up just helping people where we could, helping the police quell any disorder. There was a lot of shock in the city. But we slowly got there; we slowly helped the other emergency services get through that. It was a difficult time, but it was also a very memorable time, and you saw the community pull together. As has already been traversed through this House, you see the best of New Zealand. That was differently something that I always look back on.

I remember several years later when there was the Kaikōura quakes, and a similar thing—I got the call from the boss, he told me to get a platoon of soldiers together. We loaded up some trucks, and at the time we couldn’t take the direct route intoKaikōura, so we had to go in through what is now famously called the inland route, and we set up shop at the Kaikōura Racecourse. There was no water, none of that, so we brought all of that in, and we set up a combat service support team down on the racecourse. The emergency operations centre (EOC) was set up in the council buildings there. One thing I remember at the time was just the fantastic service that the marae provided there. I sent electricians up there to connect the power, we had a reefer container, we brought up some Kärcher kitchens, and they were able to feed about 500 people in the community—three meals a day. We were also able to resupply the supermarket there as well. Again, that was another example where we saw that community pull together, and just help in any way we can.

But there was also a lot of luck in a lot of these responses. So if we remember the Canterbury quake, we had HMNZSCanterbury docked at Littleton Harbour, that was a lifesaver. We were able to draw on those supplies and get them into Christchurch city, and all the Defence Force personnel that were there were able to support, too. With the Kaikōura quake, for those that may not remember, there was the navy 75th anniversary, so we had our Five Eyes partners up at that anniversary, and they brought down their ships and we used their rotary wing support; they delivered supplies. We actually got them to help us move campervans out of the city and move tourists back down to Littleton Harbour. Again, that was a fantastic example of not just our community but our Five Eyes partners getting involved in helping us wherever we can. We see that now, particularly with Taskforce Kiwi, and they deploy people overseas to help out with natural disasters as well. I think they deserve a special acknowledgment for the work, and the routine that they’ve actually established when we do set up these EOCs, and their ability to send liaison officers—and we get those former Defence Force people, or former people in the emergency management space, to actually provide that assistance to us. So that deserves a special mention, there.

The last thing I’ll just touch on is what’s next. We have the alpine fault, and according to appendix V, we have a 75 percent chance of that happening, so we need to be ready, and this bill will set us up for that. So I commend this bill to the House.

Mr Speaker, I’m very, very proud to be able to speak on the final reading of this bill as it gets passed today. I’m going to keep it really brief, because I know I’m going to get emotional—here we go already.

Cyclone Gabrielle was massive for Hawke’s Bay, and we went through so much as a community. There was so much pain, people lost their lives and their livelihoods. The silver lining of the conversations that we had in the community afterwards was that something was going to change, and I’m so proud of what has changed as a result. I want to say thank you to the people of Hawke’s Bay for sharing those hard, hard-learnt lessons so that we could get this right. I want to say thank you across the House for working together to make sure that we didn’t make this political, because it’s so important that when something like this happens again, we give the community the power to be involved, and that we give people the power and protection to do what they need to do in advance of an event, so that we can protect as many lives as we possibly can.

I know I’ll be able to talk to the community a lot about this in the days and weeks to come. I just want to say thank you, Minister, and thank you to everybody that’s been part of it, because this is really important. I commend the bill to the house.

💬 SPEAKER: Sosene—