Emergency Management Bill

on behalf of the Minister for Emergency Management: I present a legislative statement on the Emergency Management Bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: I move, That the Emergency Management Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Governance and Administration Committee to consider the bill.

I wish to start by acknowledging the work done by the parliamentary colleagues who also recognised the need to strengthen our emergency management system. In particular, they are the Hon Kiritapu Allan, who led the initial development of this bill, and former civil defence Ministers the Hon Peeni Henare and the Hon Kris Faafoi, and, in his absence—as I am delivering the speech on his behalf—the Hon Kieran McAnulty.

The development of the Emergency Management Bill continues the work of predecessors to implement the Government’s response to the Ministerial Review: Better Responses to Natural Disasters and Other Emergencies in New Zealand. This review was set up by the Hon Gerry Brownlee in 2017 to advise on the most appropriate operational and legislative mechanisms to support effective responses to natural disasters and other emergencies, and I acknowledge the Hon Gerry Brownlee for establishing a cross-party group in 2017. Emergencies are above politics. We need a system that will work for all New Zealanders, regardless of who is in Government.

The frequency, complexity, and consequences of recent emergencies like Cyclone Gabrielle have highlighted the importance of updating the legislation to improve how we manage risks, respond to and recover from emergencies, and empower and support community resilience. The Emergency Management Bill will repeal and replace the now two-decade-old Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002. The strength of our emergency management system is that it is locally led. The bill reinforces that approach and makes some practical improvements to ensure the system is best placed for the future. It is not designed as a fundamental transformation of the emergency management system.

Terminology: I am going to take this opportunity today to outline some of the key changes the bill introduces. First, the bill replaces the term “civil defence” in the current Act with “emergency management”. Current civil defence emergency management groups will become emergency management committees. This is consistent with international practice and better reflects the broad and integrated nature of the emergency management sector.

Roles and responsibilities: second, there is a lack of clarity about the respective roles and responsibilities of civil defence emergency management groups, and local authorities have impacted the effectiveness of the emergency management system. To improve role clarity, for example, the bill specifies the distinct and separate functions of local authorities and emergency management committees.

There is also some uncertainty about the scope of the roles and responsibilities of agencies that play a role in leading or supporting emergency management activities. Managing the consequences of emergencies does not always sit neatly with the lead agency and may require other agencies to provide support—for example, providing welfare services or temporary accommodation for people who have had to leave their home.

The bill includes a new power for regulations to be made relating to the roles and responsibilities of lead and support agencies. This power is subject to specified safeguards, including a requirement to consult with relevant Ministers and Public Service agencies’ chief executives.

Enhancing Māori participation: next, this bill recognises the important role Māori play in our emergency management system and enhances Māori participation at all levels—national, regional, and local—and across strategic planning and operational activity. Māori, including iwi, whānau, hapū, and marae, already play an important role in Aotearoa New Zealand’s emergency management system, but it is not expressly referenced in the 2002 Act. Māori have significant knowledge and expertise as well as resources that are activated early in times of emergency. Time and time again, we have seen Māori respond swiftly to emergencies and carry out vital work in supporting the welfare of everyone in their communities. For example, during the Auckland floods in January this year, Manurewa Marae provided kai packs and set up a phone line for people in the community to ring if they needed support, and again, during Cyclone Gabrielle, we saw iwi, hapū, and marae mobilise to help with evacuations and support impacted whānau.

Given the role that Māori play in response, it makes sense to ensure that they have a guaranteed presence on the committees that plan for such responses. The bill introduces a requirement to include Māori members on both the emergency management committees and emergency management co-ordinating executives formally co-ordinating executive groups. It is important that Māori members are appointed via systems that are developed locally. To achieve this, the bill enables regulations to prescribe locally appropriate appointment mechanisms for members which will be developed with Māori and local government. The bill also requires emergency management committees to collaborate with Māori and iwi in the development of local emergency management plans.

At the national level, the bill establishes a new National Māori Emergency Management Advisory Group to provide advice to the Director of Emergency Management on Māori interests and knowledge relevant to emergency management. The bill also recognises the role of Māori in emergency management by including Māori in the national emergency management plans.

The bill enhances the resilience and accountability of critical infrastructure. As you will all know, Cyclone Gabrielle caused significant damage to critical infrastructure, including transport networks and telecommunications. Cyclone Gabrielle and other recent severe weather events have highlighted just how vulnerable these systems are. The ability of infrastructure systems to function during adverse conditions and quickly recover to acceptable levels of service after an event is fundamental to the wellbeing of communities.

The Emergency Management Bill introduces several changes to the increase of resilience in New Zealand’s infrastructure and infrastructure services before, during, and after emergencies. These include clarifying the roles and responsibilities of critical infrastructure entities in emergency management, a requirement for critical infrastructure entities to develop or contribute to the development of sector-specific plans for responding to and recovering from emergencies, a requirement for critical infrastructure entities to establish and publicly state the levels of service they plan on being able to provide during and after an emergency, and a requirement for critical infrastructure entities to report annually to the Director of Emergency Management and their regulatory agencies on how they are planning on meeting their obligations under the bill. I acknowledge there has been some concern about the potential cost impacts of these changes on critical infrastructure entities, and I welcome the select committee considering this further.

Enabling equitable outcomes: we know that emergencies can amplify existing inequalities and disproportionately impact some population groups, including rural communities, culturally and linguistically diverse communities, seniors, and disabled people. To ensure that their needs are met in emergency response and recovery, the bill requires emergency management committees to engage with representatives of these communities during the development of their emergency management committee plan.

Emergency management rules: finally, the bill updates the legal framework on emergency management. This includes empowering the Director of Emergency Management to make rules for the emergency management system and for the inclusion of the new infringement scheme to achieve compliance with the law and reduce harm caused by minor offending.

Select committee process and recommendations: the bill takes into account many lessons identified from numerous emergencies that New Zealand has experienced, and I encourage the select committee to consider whether further amendments could be made to the bill to adopt improvements in response to more recent emergencies.

New Zealanders are and will continue to be at risk from a broad range of hazards and threats. It’s critical that we work together to ensure the legislation that underpins the emergency management system is inclusive, modern, and enduring. I encourage people and organisations to make submissions on the bill at the select committee. Hearing a wide range of views and experiences and being open to ideas and change is essential for ensuring that the legislation that underpins our emergency management system is inclusive and will deliver better outcomes for all people before, during, and after emergencies. The goal of the Emergency Management Bill is to set the emergency management system up to be responsive and to deliver for all people in Aotearoa New Zealand, and I commend it to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I thank Minister Willow-Jean Prime for her remarks. I think it’s important that these discussions in the space of emergency management, as we’re calling it these days, continue across the House and, of course, across New Zealand. Of course, I’d be remiss not to acknowledge those who as recently as February of this year, and, actually, even more recently in the Tairāwhiti region—places like Gisborne—have been very hard hit this year. So even though the emphasis of this bill is rightly looking forward at ways that these procedures and policies should be implemented in the future, of course, we have a very recent and in some cases tragic example of what can happen when natural disaster strikes, and so it’s appropriate that we all take this very seriously indeed.

I regret to point out to the House that while the aims of the bill are worthy—and, indeed, even some of the detail, too—what is missing from this bill is very serious in terms of some omissions of lessons that should have been learnt from early 2023 and that are playing out very much on the ground in areas like Hawke’s Bay. It’s not limited to that, but that region was hit particularly hard, and I know from having visited residents of Eskdale and Pakowhai as recently as this week that they would not be comfortable, I think, for this bill to be debated in the House without some of the serious, significant shortfalls of that response and recovery—so far—without those issues being raised, so I will do that.

In doing so, I should point out that National doesn’t regard this bill as being sufficiently complete or comprehensive enough to be worthy of support at its first reading, but we do commit to constructive engagement through the legislative process. No doubt at select committee we and, more importantly, members of the New Zealand public will have the opportunity to make submissions about how they feel this bill may or may not be fit for purpose. To avoid going through the details, I acknowledge the Minister has set out in her ministerial statement a number of the key elements of the bill, and to the extent that these are worthy of support—for example, emphasising a locally-led recovery—of course we support those, but with caveats, and I’ll come to those shortly.

To focus, though, perhaps as helpfully as possible in my time available, I do wish to emphasise the areas in which it seems to me—unless I’m missing something obvious—that there are some major gaps. The first is immunity from prosecution. There have been examples that have been raised with me in the Hawke’s Bay region of actions that were taken at the time in good faith by people acting in, frankly, heroic fashion to assist to save the lives of their fellow Kiwis in an hour of need, and to learn now that they face the prospect of legal action that would take a business-as-usual approach to matters of compliance with various norms, and without the acknowledgment that the scenario is very much one that was not normal, it is disappointing. I won’t tread in dangerous territory to comment on a matter that’s currently before the New Zealand courts, but suffice to say the lessons of White Island should be heeded in terms of emergency responses undertaken, again, in good faith versus business-as-usual health and safety at work practices—enough said.

Although, on a related note, in terms of looking back at emergency responses and the way that people acted in that very immediate way, it’s been disappointing, again, to discover that now there is an unseemly haggling between central government and local government in terms of who is going to pay the costs of some of those actions. I understand that helicopter fuel is an element of that in terms of sign-offs being given and actions being taken in good faith, and, actually, to my understanding, very helpfully indeed. I think if the lesson to be learnt from that is that people will put themselves in financial or legal risk by doing the right thing by their fellow Kiwis, including at the organisational level for local government, and therefore they’d be acting against their own interests and therefore disincentivised in the future, that would be very disappointing and indeed dangerous. I don’t think that the current bill in its current form addresses that. If I’m wrong, then I’ll very happily withdraw and apologise, but it seems to me that that’s a major gap that this bill should address.

Second, I think—if I can put this as kindly as I’m able—the focus of the bill is bureaucratic as opposed to practical in tone. Clarifying roles and responsibilities across the system is helpful in itself, but to be largely silent on the issue of allowing resources in the form of funding to be spent in short order on the ground to enable a good response seems to me an obvious gap. While, obviously, this kind of legislation wouldn’t anticipate specific appropriations—there are separate Budget and other public finance mechanisms for that—I think that’s something that should be spelt out very clearly. We do need to understand in what ways it will be that local community groups—including iwi, but not limited to iwi—can spend money to the betterment of their people in a way that reflects the actual need on the ground at short notice, be it blankets, food, and so forth, without the need for discomfort of a financial or other nature later.

Third, there doesn’t seem to be much of a role for the private sector other than the community and NGO and iwi Māori kind of way. While it is absolutely appropriate and, we would say in the National Party, it is indeed the best thing to focus on those community organisations as part of a broader ethos of locally-led response, I think to miss a trick in terms of the ability for investment to be provided from outside Government or the community sector—which tends not to be particularly well resourced moneywise—is I think, again, a missed opportunity.

Finally, I do want to just pick up on this notion of a locally-led response. We like that philosophically in the National Party, and, actually, to give credit where it’s due, if we give the full range of the phrase as expressed in select committee, for example, by Minister Grant Robertson, “locally-led but centrally supported”. That’s worthy, as I say, at a philosophical level, but the reality is that lessons that should have been learnt that are taking place right now in terms of the mismanagement of various aspects of the current crisis response/recovery—those lessons need to be heeded.

So to talk about a locally-led response, but to have a situation where in the Hawke’s Bay some $8.8 million is in danger of being transferred back to Wellington because the mechanisms weren’t sufficiently well set-up or operated to get that money out to the people in desperate need there—that’s a major miss. So too is the idea that local government in its current form and in areas with large geographical needs—big areas, but small ratepayer bases—have the resources to advise on all the things that are needed. That’s really difficult, and that’s not an easy one, because, again, philosophically we like the idea of localism and, generally speaking, our flavour of arguing these matters in asset management is very much geared towards supporting local. But the reality is that when systems are set up without sufficient clarity or without the central support that’s been touted, then that’s the inevitable result.

So too if we think about the debris waste removal fund. It’s quite a generous amount of money, arguably, provided by local government for that—or, at least, announced and actually allocated—but the reality is a very small fraction of that’s actually gone out the door. Again, if we don’t do anything in this opportunity that we have before us now to enable that to be unlocked, then that would be disappointing and a miss.

I do also just want to touch briefly on the aspect whereby the bill seeks to recognise and enhance Māori participation. We think that’s positive in itself, and it’s absolutely right that the minister acknowledges—as many people have done—the role of marae and other Māori-based organisations in opening their doors and helping to respond to local need. I think we wouldn’t be doing justice, however, to other groups in the community if we didn’t also recognise those who open doors of RSAs, churches, sports clubs, community halls, and so forth, and, indeed, individuals in their homes, and I appreciate that’s harder to contemplate in a legislative sense. But our view is that we should be supporting all local mechanisms and community groups, and to set out one, even acknowledging the Treaty of Waitangi aspect and basis for that—I think we’ll do ourselves a disservice if we don’t have a broad enough view that actually looks to take on the community knowledge and resources of all types of local groups.

So for all these reasons, we want to support the bill, but we’d need to see some considerable additional work, as I’ve outlined in this speech. So, at this stage, National does not support this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a privilege to take a call on the first reading of the Emergency Management Bill. Can I acknowledge Minister Kieran McAnulty for the work that he has done to get the bill to this point and have it introduced to the House. I’m looking forward to the select committee process, where we can consider, I am going to anticipate, a significant number of submissions so that we can improve the bill and bring it back to the House to improve our emergency management system in New Zealand.

In my electorate of Nelson, we have what I’d call a well-oiled machine in our local emergency management response That is due to people having worked together over a number of incidents, including Cyclones Gita and Fehi, the Pigeon Valley fires, COVID-19, and, most recently, the August floods in the Nelson region. Can I acknowledge in particular two outstanding individuals, Roger Ball and Alec Lavertis, who have led our local responses to many of these events.

I want to acknowledge that our team has learnt through many examples exactly what a locally led and centrally supported response looks like. Part of that has included iwi liaison officers, and our local civil defence response has been one of the models that is being used in the implementation now through this legislation of how we properly partner with iwi Māori. I want to acknowledge Shane Graham, Barney Thomas, Dexter Traill, Aroha Gilling, and, most recently, Rebecca Mason for the work that they have done leading the iwi work within the Nelson-Tasman civil defence system. I note that iwi leaders have conducted mechanisms like Coordinated Incident Management System training to ensure that they are well resourced to support the response that we have in our region.

I’m very much looking forward to this bill coming through the select committee so that we can also look at the exact matters that Mr Penk raised around the response to events of this year and look to any further inclusions we can make in this bill. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, this is an important piece of legislation that is being proposed here, and I think especially in the context of what we’ve seen over the recent weather events of the last six months in particular, that has led to a significant impact for many communities around the country. When we consider how we might evolve our response and how we might better deliver outcomes for those communities, it is appropriate that indeed we should be reviewing the legislation from time to time, but then have more granular reviewing, of course, after those instances, those individual responses, to ensure that we take any lessons learnt and implement them as effectively as possible to enhance future responses and to minimise the impact for those that are suffering through some particular emergency event, as it may be.

Now, the focus of that review, of course, should be around how we can ensure we are delivering the best outcome for all New Zealanders, and I think that’s the critical thing here. To Mr Penk’s point, we’re not supporting this piece of legislation, because we do have concerns that the focus is not where it should be. Having a disproportionate focus on one part of our society rather than all New Zealanders, indeed, I believe will lead to poorer outcomes from an emergency management response perspective and, therefore, poorer outcomes for those impacted communities, which ultimately should not be the intent of the legislation—and I don’t believe it is. We need to ensure that we can evolve, as I said, partly because this legislation now is 20 years old, but, actually, as we look through that, the way in which we respond to events, the technology available, and the things that become important or need to be prioritised can change over that time as well.

So, of course, in that context it is appropriate that we do consider it, and there are many aspects within the proposed legislation that we are quite comfortable with, particularly some of the technical aspects that are really just modernising that stuff. It all broadly makes sense. We don’t have a particular issue with that.

The key concern, though, as I touched on and I will expand on more, is that we are seeing a focus particularly around the needs of one part of our society and not all, and for me, that’s a real concern. When I think about the diversity of communities in my electorate in the Waikato, we have some incredible diversity. We have a whole range of different ethnicities represented there.

We have a whole range of different priorities or different backgrounds, different groupings, within that in terms of urban or rural, younger, older—any number of different mechanisms by which our communities across the country are made up. We need to consider the needs of all of these different groups and how best to respond to deliver the right outcomes for them, because, ultimately, any piece of emergency management legislation should be there to provide the maximum benefit for all New Zealanders, to minimise the impact for them in terms of the consequences they may face as they are preparing for or, indeed, are in an emergency event, and to ensure that we have the best mechanisms available to deliver the fastest, most appropriate response.

I think one of the concerns we have here as well is that we’re adding more bureaucracy in—or what’s being proposed in this bill by the Government is looking to add more bureaucracy in—and creating separate groups in terms of the new functions for the National Māori Emergency Management Advisory Group, the requirement to include Māori members on emergency committees, and, indeed, requiring those emergency management committees to collaborate with Māori. With all these things, any existing committee would be considering the needs of their broader community, and, indeed, I’m confident it’s the case in the Waikato that our civil defence emergency management committees are currently set up considering the needs of all New Zealanders—as they absolutely should be—rather than having a specific focus on one ethnicity over others and potentially then having a different set of outcomes for different people within the communities.

When I talk to our civil defence groups at the moment, they are very well grounded in their communities. They understand the needs, they are engaging with those different parts of our society in our local communities to ensure that a good understanding is held of those needs, and, indeed, incorporating people with skill sets, where necessary, to enable those groupings to ensure the best outcome is delivered in the most timely manner. I think this is going too far in terms of legislating to create that particular requirement when, indeed, most communities are already considering it, and there’s nothing stopping them from being encouraged to do so to ensure that they are more broadly representing their communities if they’re not, although I doubt that there would be any that are in that position.

But, ultimately, we need to get to the point where we are working alongside and understanding all of those needs, and I’ve talked to that a few times because, actually, it is quite important. It’s not just the needs of Māori within our communities; it’s the needs of all New Zealanders, regardless of ethnicity, and, indeed, all the different groupings. Mr Penk touched on some of the community groups, the RSAs, the churches, and the community halls that are involved in some of these responses. There’s also a whole range of other groups like the Rural Support Trust, Federated Farmers, Taskforce Kiwi, Student Volunteer Army—all these groupings that have a role to play in any emergency management response, and we need to ensure that we are creating a piece of legislation that best enables our emergency responders and our planners to deliver the best outcome. There will always be an impact for our communities when we see these sorts of events, but preparing for that, minimising that impact, and ensuring we are delivering consistent outcomes across the board surely has to be the focus, rather than coming in with what appears to be more bureaucracy, and, I believe, it will risk slowing down the response process rather than enhancing it.

Finally, I just want to touch on the reimbursement aspect as well, because that’s another area in this piece of legislation that outlines a more detailed process for reimbursement of Māori, but no one else. Also, when we look at that in the context of, again, some of the comments Mr Penk made about the impact in the East Coast region currently and some of the frustration that’s coming through around the inability to have money flowing through the system when it is available for these emergencies responses, costs have been incurred in good faith by community members individually and by groups that have all chipped in, stepped up, stood up to help out.

Ultimately, that’s what really matters. We want to ensure that people continue to do that, and if we’re not able to streamline and have an efficient process to reimburse those costs, then there is a risk that we’d create a situation where people may think twice about helping out, and I think a great example is the helicopter fuel. It’s an expensive cost but it played a vital function, especially as most people will remember seeing video footage of the rooftop rescue that took place with one helicopter balancing a skid on the roof of a house which was nearly fully under water and rescuing some people off the roof. Those sorts of things are fantastic to see when people are prepared to step up and have the skills and assess the ability to deliver outcomes, and they should indeed be compensated for that in a timely manner.

Those are the sorts of practical things that we really need to focus on when we are enhancing our emergency management legislation to ensure that we can better deliver outcomes, we can reflect on what’s happened in the past, and, ultimately, bring that forward to help minimise that impact and reduce the risk, obviously, from a preparatory phase in terms or preparing or reducing the likelihood of an impact, but then when an impact occurs, ensure we’re there to provide support and, indeed, then, after the fact, making sure that appropriate recognition and reimbursement occurs.

So we’re not supporting it at this first reading. We do look forward, however, to hearing submissions throughout the next phase—the select committee phase—and following this through in the hope that we can get some practical changes, because, ultimately, this is an area where we need to work together. We are prepared to do that, but this bill as it stands is not the right solution. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’ll begin my contribution just by recognising the tireless work of the Minister in terms of the emergency management response from a central level this year in what has been a really horrific year for many people.

I would just say in response to Tim van de Molen, the last speaker, that in terms of reimbursement and the recognition of Māori, the fact is that often it is marae who open their doors to all New Zealanders when we’ve seen these emergency situations play out. However, I do take the point from Mr Penk that we do need to look at the network on the ground and ensure that local entities are being supported.

Upper Harbour is a north-west Auckland electorate, and it’s one of the places in New Zealand that was severely affected by the weather events of this year. From Massey to Tōtara Vale and out a bit further to Muriwai, there are people who have been horrifically affected. They’ve welcomed the Government’s response in terms of the indications of central support, but in addition to looking backwards and needing that support, they also want reassurance that we’re planning for the risks of the future. So I do believe that this will be a very welcome bill for many, and I agree with colleagues in their anticipation of many submissions in this space.

This is really a bill about modernising our approach to emergency response in a changing world, and while we’re doing that, we still have an underlying principle which remains the same, which is that it will be a locally led response, regionally coordinated, and centrally supported. I do think that that ought to remain at the heart of any emergency response. I do look forward to reviewing the submissions that come in on this bill, which I’m sure will include constituents from north-west Auckland, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of ACT to discuss this bill at first reading: the Emergency Management Bill. This is obviously a very important and salient topic for New Zealanders, and my thoughts certainly go out to those who were affected by recent events and are still being affected.

This bill has been touted as not a fundamental transformation of the emergency management system, and it’s pretty understandable why and I couldn’t agree more. As a bit of background, this bill has been in the works for some time now and is ostensibly a result of the 2017 ministerial review that was launched under the previous Government. Between the actual drafting and the first reading this morning, we’ve obviously gone through multiple emergencies in the meantime which have significantly challenged the operational side of emergency management and stress-tested the coordination between agencies. The outcomes there have been very interesting to look at and have generated many lessons for future responses, independent of this piece of legislation.

So I’m curious as to how many of the lessons from the cyclone Cyclone Gabrielle, in particular, are in this bill, given the timing of its arrival in this House, because operationally the response has been a bit of a mess. This bill prescribes a considerable amount of detail and procedure with a view to “managing the emergency management system across … risk reduction, readiness, response, and recovery”. So it claims to do some pretty grand things, while at the same time claiming to not be particularly transformational of the emergency management system.

It was interesting—and other members have spoken about localism—to note in the Minister’s statement that “The strength of our emergency management system is that it is locally led.” I say that it’s interesting because we’ve just had recently two pieces of legislation passed in this Parliament under urgency where this Government gave themselves enormous powers with an emphasis on centralisation and, of course, a response led from the Beehive’s bunker. So either the best approach is locally led or centrally led, and it can’t really have it on either of those extremes. Further, on the ground they have to decide if those efforts should be led by civil defence teams or other groups, or perhaps it’s iwi-led, and if there’s a lack of clarity here, then the same problems with communication and coordination will continue.

If I can refer to an article by Radio New Zealand, where they stated that “Legislation [that] was tabled in Parliament [is] to try to head off a repeat of the crippling effects of another Cyclone Gabrielle.”, and I would just ask how do we know. The official response to that cyclone was “Henry VIII” bills, and if this bill isn’t intended to be transformative, given we’re lagging behind in international standards in this space, how is this bill supposed to avoid those effects? It is useful to note that according to the legislative statement, this bill contains lessons learnt from the likes of the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s interesting, because if there were useful lessons from the pandemic, then were those lessons not learnt prior to Cyclone Gabrielle?

So if we turn to some of the key points of the legislation, there is a clarification that committees are responsible for regional coordination and governance, and local authority members for leading and delivering local emergency management to their communities and participating in the committee. There’s that emphasis on localism, again, which I re-emphasise is arguably not consistent with the approaches taken this year.

Then we turn to a fairly significant part of the bill, which is that it “recognises and enhances Māori participation in the emergency management system”, and that sounds very good. Obviously, iwi-owned organisations already do play a significant role in emergency response, with the nature of that role depending on the regions affected. Following Cyclone Gabrielle, in particular—especially over there in Tairāwhiti—many iwi-led organisations were doing much of the heavy lifting in terms of getting resources to people in need, and they continue to do so, even without this legislation in place. Of course, as Chris Penk pointed out, so did a whole range of other charities, and under this bill I think it’s useful to ask, looking into the future, who will manage some of those resources in future. Will the mayoral funds, for instance, or will the Red Cross be allowed to continue the work that it does and the money it collects and the allocation, although I understand now that with a lot of the money that the Government has put forward, there have been challenges getting that through to the communities.

This bill is not just about engagement, though. It fundamentally establishes the National Emergency Management Advisory (NEMA) group to advise the Director of Emergency Management—OK. It mandates that Māori members be appointed to the emergency management committees and emergency management coordinating executives and it requires emergency management committees to collaborate with Māori on the development of the committees’ plans. So therein lies a bit of a problem for us with this bill, because what it lacks in transformation and actual usefulness and coordination, it tries to make up for by somehow being a co-governance bill, and it is almost as if there was a starting point of “Let’s do something more around co-governance. Well, we’ve got this emergency management stuff that’s been under way for a while, let’s take that on to the end of it.” So whatever good things are in this bill, they have been overshadowed by ideology and the motivation for doing it—which is disappointing—in addition to the timing.

So I’m really just asking fundamental questions, I think, for the select committee: what measurable outcomes are they trying to achieve with this, and how will it be different to the level of collaboration that already exists today in the engagement and in the services provided in marae opening their doors—all of this stuff that’s already happening. Why is this legislation actually necessary?

Moving on, there’s also the unsubstantiated and unclear raid on the private sector: “requiring critical infrastructure entities to … share information with the National Emergency Management Agency, [other] agencies, and … Committees for [their own] planning:”. It will require them to “establish and publish” their plans. It will require “annual reporting to the Director” as ongoing compliance, and, as the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) says, while this was unlikely to provide meaningful information, companies sort of did this anyway.

Companies from electricity to comms companies and port companies opposed this, saying that it was more red tape and costs. So it was unclear why they were doing that, and, really, the deal is where’s the focus on resilience, building resilience, and improving wastewater, hospitals, and roading? What are the expectations for Waka Kotahi, what’s happening with Wellington Hospital—the list goes on.

So where’s that resilience aspect? It’s just a whole lot of compliance and bureaucracy, fundamentally, and during Cyclone Gabrielle, the Government did not even make it clear that they should reconnect first emergency services, hospitals, something else—telcos. Telecommunications were obviously not prioritised and there were lots of lots of issues there. They were doing their part, they did their part very well, and it seems like they’re just getting hit with compliance.

The committee will be required to engage with communities disproportionately impacted by emergencies—on the face of it, that seems fine. It’s a bit unclear and non-specific. Notwithstanding that, it sounds pragmatic, but that’s what an efficient and effective system does, based on people’s needs, anyway. It shouldn’t need to be put into the legislation; it should be expected, and I would say that if officials have been ignoring the worst-affected people in recent events, they should probably be sacked.

I’ll just turn quickly to some of MBIE’s concerns. They’ve stated that “Planning Emergency Levels of Service … are unlikely to achieve stated objectives—the … regime is unlikely to provide meaningful information to communities, …the costs of [these] reforms are unclear”, and those are very concerning comments. They note that “there is very little detail on what role/functions of lead agencies [of] NEMA and CDEM”—and, I mean, this is extraordinary. With the amount of content in this bill, that sort of feedback is quite worrying.

It is not clear what immediate action is being taken among the raft of agencies to fill the gaps. No agency has responsibility for the critical infrastructure system, and a number of critical sectors are not subject to regulation around their resilience at all. So the raid on the private sector isn’t even especially focused and it’s not very well-thought-out.

So the whole system is a game of catch-up for New Zealand by international standards, with other developed countries more advanced on their disaster-proofing their services in the face of the growing threats and the increasing threats here in New Zealand. In light of what’s going on in other countries, we just have to ask: how does this bill actually help? It just seems like it’s rearranging the deckchairs. Really, the Government needs to solve resilience, get rid of the ideology, let the private sector help, don’t close the runways, enable funding to actually reach communities, and don’t pretend looting and crime isn’t happening, because that’s extremely unhelpful and it’s gaslighting locals. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. I’m pleased to take a call on the Emergency Management Bill—which the Green Party is supporting—having come from a part of a very good seminar by The Aotearoa Circle and a presentation by Dr Rob Murdoch of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) this morning, highlighting the increasing risk of severe weather events, and also noting the comments of Dr Nicholas Stern way back in 2006, who said that “the benefits of strong and early action on climate change far outweigh the [economic] costs of not acting.” We know that we’re getting more severe weather events as a result of a changing climate. That is having a huge impact on people, communities, and the economy, and I acknowledge those personal impacts that a lot of people have felt to their homes, property, and their communities this year.

This bill, in seeking to modernise the emergency management system, draws on the work that was done by the technical advisory group set up by the Hon Gerry Brownlee back in 2017, and then the Government’s response to that. It is about making that system better placed to respond to these severe weather events and other emergencies like pandemics. There is a change in the language. I think from now on, rather than civil defence, it will be known as emergency management.

Speakers from National and ACT have both been critical of the provisions that provide for greater recognition of Māori participation in the emergency management system. The Green Party sees that as strengthening that system because of the huge role that marae have played in emergencies, in hosting so many people. In Tairāwhiti at the moment, the marae there are still accommodating people who have lost their homes because of weather events. So it is just ensuring that it happens everywhere, not just in those communities which have already done this, such as Tairāwhiti.

Similarly, there are requirements in the bill that each emergency management committee must identify and engage with communities within its area that may be disproportionately affected by emergencies. In the past, civil defence hasn’t always thought carefully about people with disabilities and what services needed to be provided to support them in quite challenging events where mobility may be limited for some, and then what happens when there is flooding? I think too, that it’s useful to make the roles and responsibilities across the whole system at that national, regional, and local level clearer, and to have an explicit rule-making power for the Director of Emergency Management.

But what I would like to comment on most is the requirement in the bill that requires critical infrastructure entities to establish and publish their planned emergency-level response, because we saw in Cyclone Gabrielle, one of the most destructive storms to ever hit Aotearoa, that we had at the height of the crisis more than 660 cellphone towers which were offline. That led to huge stress for communities. People were unable to contact loved ones in the region and find out if they were alive or if they were OK, power was cut to more than 250,000 people, and entire regions were cut off from telecommunications for extended periods. People had to wait days to hear news of their families, and even the fire and emergency services were cut off from their own control rooms because of that lack of power.

Where you get essential services disrupted, that does increase the impact on human health and welfare, and on mental health. So the requirement in this bill, and the setting out in places like clause 54 of the duties of critical infrastructure entities, is I think a very welcome improvement.

ACT has been critical of it for raiding the private sector, but we have seen—and you will be well aware, Madam Assistant Speaker Williams—that in Christchurch after the earthquakes, it was because Orion had had a proactive strategy of investing in seismic resilience and ensuring that its substations, which were often small brick buildings, were strengthened over a period of years that it did enable Orion to restore electricity services much more quickly after those big quakes than it would have been able to if they hadn’t had that proactive, foresighted response. Being a bit of a geek, I looked up a 2011 report that the Kestrel Group did in reviewing the resilience lessons of Orion’s 2010 and 2011 earthquake experience, and that report said that a driver for those improvements and that investment in resilience had been to avoid major outages. Orion coined the term “MOCHED”—major outage causing huge economic disruption. That term and that culture was embedded within the organisation, so their investment strategy, their work, was around that, and it led to Orion being one of the most reliable electricity suppliers in Aotearoa.

It’s that same focus on resilience that this bill is set to embed in the emergency management system by requiring people like the telcos to have much more of a plan to publish what their emergency level of service will be and to report on how they meet the obligations in the bill, because it seemed that the big telcos, in response to Cyclone Gabrielle, said, “Well, it wasn’t really our fault. It was because there was a power outage.” So rather than thinking, “OK, we’re going to get power outages in a major storm. How do we provide against that? Do we have diesel generators?”—which we wouldn’t necessarily want at every cell phone tower. But how do we cover for that?

So I think this bill is quite important in the responsibilities that it is going to put on those big infrastructure providers, the lifeline utilities, in just ensuring that their resilience planning is really up to scale with the size and impact of what we are facing in the current climate emergency, with the increased likelihood of more severe storm events. With droughts come a much higher fire risk. We saw the huge impacts of that both in Nelson and the Port Hills fire in Christchurch. With increased storm events, there are more risks of flash floods—as we’ve seen in Tāmaki-makau-rau—and rivers flooding, and how the emergency services actually respond to that.

So I think it is modernising the emergency management network, but one of the critical parts is the requirements that it will have on infrastructure providers and getting them to really invest in future thinking, and perhaps following the example of Orion, which had looked at seismic resilience, having recognised that that was a key issue for it in Canterbury, even though at the time earthquakes were not common in that region. We do need to plan ahead, and the Green Party is pleased to support this bill.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. It’s a privilege to stand here and take a call on the Emergency Management Bill at its first reading, and I want to thank all the Ministers that have been involved in bringing it here today. I stand by the statement: “The strength of our emergency management system is that it is locally led.” The bill will set the emergency management system to be more responsive and it will lay the foundation for regulations appropriate for the hazards this country is exposed to. It makes some practical improvements to ensure the system is best placed so that our next generations feel safe and they have a future, and a future for those yet to come. It will help to minimise those risks and help them to manage them in the future.

The bill does recognise the lessons from the recent major emergency experiences. We want communities to be better prepared to respond and recover from these emergency situations. I know for a fact that there are communities already doing their bit to be better prepared—for example, locally, my local kaunihere, kaumātua o Whanganui. They are already asking the questions around how they can strengthen their communities, how can they strengthen themselves, and how can they put together their own little emergency management plans during these times. For them, they are concerned about their friends and their whānau that live alone. Who is going to take care of them? Who is going to go and look for them? Who is going to be there to awhi and to manaaki them?

Notwithstanding, of course, that iwi and Māori communities have the ability to execute, they have the ability to manoeuvre, and they have the ability to expedite help and support to whānau, hapū, and the communities around them. They are passionate about always including the wider communities around their marae. I’ve seen their ability to regroup as a region. I’ve seen how they can bring leaders together and people on the ground within minutes and within hours consecutively. This is not unique to one community either, nor is it unique to one marae or hapū; this can happen across the motu—this can happen across Aotearoa.

For me, it does make sense to ensure that any considerations be taken into careful and serious thought when it comes to developing the bill, and I want to acknowledge too that the bill talks about enhancing the ability for Māori and iwi to participate. So I acknowledge that their contribution to emergency situations is spoken of within this bill. This will be done, of course, by clarifying who is doing what, and the roles and the responsibilities. This bill is geared towards inclusive, community-led responses to natural disasters and health events, as well as towards continuing to work with the iwi and with Māori, given the vital role they play in the emergency management.

This will not remove existing local and regional responses and recovery roles, nor change the emergency powers available under the state of emergency. But what it will do is it will repeal and replace the current two-decade-old Civil Defence Emergency Management Act. I commend this bill to the House.

I understand this is a split call. I call Simon O’Connor—five minutes.

Thank you very much. Look, I’m happy to address this first reading of the Emergency Management Bill. As the Parliament has heard, the National Party does not support this bill. We fundamentally don’t think this is the right bill or the right set of proposed new rules to actually sort the situation.

In some ways, it’s echoed already by officials within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment—or, as we know it, MBIE—who, as I understand it, were recommending that, actually, we should be doing a much wider, broader, or, if you will, wholesome set of changes into emergency management, and the best way to illustrate that is this bill looks, I would argue, far more on the bureaucratic and administrative side of things.

I think the Minister for Emergency Management himself has said that this is around management changes, and that’s fine. We know from events that happen around the country that there’s always a chance for improvement. But this bill is quite narrow in what it is trying to do, particularly around, as I say, management—if you want to call that bureaucracy, administration, or whatever. It’s not, unfortunately, looking at the more resilient side of things, and a few speakers in the House have talked about this. With the recent weather events that we’ve had around the country and the likes of cellphone towers and wider telecommunication systems, there was the lack of resilience, the lack of priority of which of those should be brought online first. It is not clear, and this bill does not—it does not—address those issues.

On this side of the House, we definitely see the need after every major storm, cyclonic, or whatever event to relook at our management systems. It makes absolute sense. The legislation that we’re looking to change was drafted in 2002, and a lot has changed since then, so I think it’s really important to stress that we on this side of the House do see the need for change and the need to improve; we just don’t think that this bill does much at all. It’s particularly focused on the management side alone, and, as I say, officials themselves have indicated they’d prefer a much wider bill.

I think, importantly, as well—well, for me personally, it just feels like we’re sort of shuffling the paper a little bit when I read through what the bill is trying to do. I’m not completely confident it’s going to make much difference on the ground. I know there’s been a lot of focus about how we engage more with Māori. Personally, I think that’s a good thing, actually. I think it’s good that the bill is addressing that we see iwi and hapū step up and others have, rightly, mentioned the place of marae, and that’s fantastic. But I don’t know why it needs to stop there, because when I think of various disasters and adverse weather events around the community, it’s not just marae that step up; it’s our local churches, halls, our Rotary groups, sports groups. I think at times—and this also can go through media—there’s sort of the impression that only one group of New Zealanders steps up, and I just think that’s wrong. I think we all step up as best we can, and we work very, very cooperatively together.

Granted, I wanted to make clear that what happened in Auckland—certainly in my electorate—was minor compared to other parts of the country, but the civil defence stood up, people from the local marae and our Pasifika community stood up, St Vincent de Paul stood up, various sports groups stood up—whole lots of New Zealanders stood up and worked together, and what struck me was that they did it remarkably well without actually much overall coordination. I think there’s just a natural sense in Kiwis of what to do.

That doesn’t take away from the need to have a management system, but my core point here is that while the bill spends a lot of time addressing our Treaty obligations and working with local iwi—which, again, makes a lot of sense—I don’t know why it needs to exclude other groups. I also don’t understand why it needs to exclude the private sector, who play an incredibly important role in this space—I mean, most of the telecommunications systems, if not all, are private, for example. A lot of the transport systems, be it from helicopters to diggers and trucks—again, these are private entities. I’m sort of surprised that the bill appears to be silent in that space.

Look, it’s not that the bill is wrong—and I want to say that really clearly. It just doesn’t really, I think, address the wider needs.

But I might just finish where I should’ve started, which is of course acknowledging all those over the last few months—it doesn’t matter if it’s the adverse weather events, Cyclone Gabrielle in particular, and other disasters which we’ve seen over the last few years. I want to acknowledge all the people who are affected there. I think certainly on this side of the House we do want to see a management system which learns from what they’ve been through, but, sadly, on this side of the House, we don’t think that this particular bill is going to contribute as we would hope it would.

I’m pleased to take a call on the first reading of the Emergency Management Bill. Can I just make some observation around the role of Parliament and the so-called thing that we talk about—the importance of democracy—and having fit for purpose legislation.

The reality on the ground, particularly as the member for Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, is we’ve experienced probably more adverse weather events than any other parts of the country. I only have to go back to multiple local states of emergency across the Tairāwhiti, going way back even before the time I came into this Parliament, with the mighty Bola incident. Fast forward into the time I came in this House and we had multiple events up in Tairāwhiti: the Tolaga Bay floods that went right down into Wairoa, we had the Napier floods in 2019, we then had Hale, Gabrielle, and, of course, just this weekend we had more flooding in Te Tairāwhiti, particularly out at Te Karaka, at State Highway 35 and State Highway 2.

For most of those events, I’ve been on the ground, so I’ve been able to see firsthand where the shortcomings are when it comes to managing our emergency response. I don’t want to take away from all those first responders across all those events and how they’ve rallied together, but my opening point is we must have legislation in this House that is fit for purpose. I am concerned that this management bill, which is what we’re talking about, hasn’t learnt from the lessons of the very recent events. They have not learnt.

Yesterday, I asked in this House multiple questions to the Minister around, yet again, a key player in that response in my electorate being the response that came from iwi, marae, and hapū across the electorate. I’m seeing, yet again, very much a throwback to the 1980s—and I’m probably showing my age, having worked in the Public Service back in the 1980s—which is that Māori’s only ambition under this bill is to be the advisory group. So I know that we are going to have another adverse weather event into Tairāwhiti or Hawke’s Bay or any other part of my electorate, and will the people on the ground from maraes—the hapū, the iwi—pick this up and go, “Thank goodness we’ve got this Emergency Management Bill.”? Will they do that? No, they won’t, because their first principle is about manaaki and about tiakitanga.

I want to talk to my colleagues on both sides, to the right of me and to the left of me, about this exclusiveness about just Māori or just iwi, because just Māori and just iwi includes everybody. So I want them to rest assured that when we talk about the role and rights of iwi and Māori in legislation, that includes and embodies everybody, and I saw that firsthand in my visits out to Rissington, to Glengarry, and to Pakowhai, where all were working together. So I just want to allay the fears on both sides of me that this is just exclusively about iwi Māori.

But back to the bill, because I think iwi Māori need to be better recognised in a bill that goes beyond the advisory, and, like the Minister asked to me yesterday, have I read the bill? Yes, I have read the bill. I have read the bill, and there’s a lot of wording in there that I could reference—but I don’t have enough time—where it talks about “should do” and “may do”, and it should be a “must”.

Yes, we have an advisory committee. Yes, we invite them at the local level and some councils are doing it, and, just yesterday, Bayden Barber, the chair of Ngāti Kahungunu, was invited to the collective councils in terms of localised emergency management. But, like he said, he did not have a vote.

So here we go yet again: Māori are being asked to be advisers, but will the advice be listened to? That was the point of questions I was asking to the Minister yesterday. It was: when do the tangata whenua absolutely have a say and a lead on the emergency response, because they are going to do it, regardless of what this bill says. What I’d like to see is that the bill is informed by the reality of what is happening on the ground as to what is the best management structure, because when everything falls down—like we saw with Gabrielle, when the infrastructure all went out—how are we communicating? That’s where those relationships will come into play.

So, for the benefit of people in this House who are asking where Te Paati Māori and Meka are standing on it, we’re going to support this bill to first reading. But we reserve our position until we hear back from those, yet again, who will be asked to come to this House to submit on something they’ve always had a view on, which is having a stand-alone Māori national emergency system—that’s what we’ll be standing for. Kia ora koutou.

Kia ora. Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s my pleasure to take a call on the Emergency Management Bill. Having come from the Defence Force, I’ve been involved with a lot of emergency responses at all levels of the response, and I can see that this is essential. This bill will absolutely enhance the response that we will be able to provide our communities.

I think that the Opposition have fundamentally misunderstood what the bill is actually trying to achieve. This bill will enable us to deliver the right effect at the right time within the right settings.

The Opposition also mentioned that there were a lot of volunteer groups providing support within the community, but the important thing is to be able to provide that coordination and enable them to do their job. There’s no use in having two volunteer groups delivering the same effect in the same location if there are multiple areas across that area that need support. Providing leadership from the centre will enable us to do that, and that’s what this bill does.

This bill is not a transformation of the system we already have in place. It wants to make improvements that will strengthen the existing system and make sure that it is adapted to the challenges that we will face in the future.

The bill also clarifies the roles of both the lead and support agency, and there can be a sense of confusion, particularly in those embryonic beginnings of an emergency response. There’s nothing worse than trying to figure out who’s in charge, and there’s a lot of dead air and a lot of delayed response as a result of that.

So, in sum, emergency systems can be quite chaotic, and it’s important that all actors within the response clearly know what their roles and responsibilities are. This bill does that. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s good to be able to rise and speak on the Emergency Management Bill at the first reading. This bill will replace the two-decades-old Civil Defence Management Emergency Management Act from 2002, and it is good that we are looking to upgrade this piece of legislation, or replace it, as we are in this case.

I just want to take a moment to recognise everyone who’s been impacted across New Zealand by the terrible weather events that we have suffered this year—in particular, the Auckland floods that occurred in January, and floods that also hit my home city of Tauranga and took out several houses down a bank in Todd Muller’s electorate of Bay of Plenty—and also everyone else that was impacted. There was some terrible flooding events and slips and loss of life. Then, of course, we move to Cyclone Gabrielle in February and the catastrophic impacts that that had across Tairāwhiti, across Hawke’s Bay, and across other areas of the country, but in particular those two regions. The devastation that occurred there was astronomical to see in person. The levels of silt that had built up were simply something that you that you wouldn’t have expected was possible, but it was really significant and completely wiped out areas there.

So we do need to make sure that we do have a robust legislative framework in place to make sure that we are equipped and ready. Being prepared is really essential, but then we also have the mechanisms in place to manage any roll-out of assistance that will inevitably come forward.

The key changes in this are to clarify the roles and responsibilities, which is always a critical step in anything that one does. The bill is requiring civil defence and emergency management plans to identify and engage with community groups that are disproportionately impacted—obviously, very important too—and it recognises the important role that Māori play, and they absolutely do.

I recall that when Cyclone Gabrielle hit, I heard that there was an effort going on at the Tauranga Aero Club. I was driving with my wife and I said, “Let’s go and have a look in there”, and what we saw was simply an incredible demonstration of community efforts to help out those in need. There was a whole hangar. People from the community were pouring in, one after the other, dropping off the critical goods that were needed, and there must have been up to 10 planes on the tarmac being filled with goods and then being sent off to a lot of remote communities that had been cut off by roads which had been destroyed. A lot of them on the ground there were managed by marae, and the reports from the pilots coming back was that the people in the marae—the Māori there—were doing an absolutely incredible job, looking after the needs of the local communities where Government officials and authorities were unable to get to providing all of the necessities from food, water, and sanitation products to everything that is required in the everyday course of one’s life. So I’m just acknowledging the superb role that the Māori played on the marae there, and also what groups such as the Aero Club did in that space.

I also want acknowledge the comments, when we come back to the legislation here as it stands in the first reading, from the member from Te Paati Māori who said that the Government, in her opinion, has not learnt from the events of this year. There have been quite a few comments that have come along that this bill does not really deal with the preparedness and the response, and is quite bureaucratic in nature. It does introduce new bureaucratic requirements. The Government has gone beyond the recommendations of the technical advisory group, and while it does enhance Māori participation—which is fantastic—I will also reiterate the comments that have been made about other groups who stand up and do an incredible job.

I think it’s important to recognise all of those, and there is a funding mechanism that is built in to this to deliver reimbursements of costs. I think we should probably go a little bit further and not just pin that to one group and say that those involved—and we’ve heard the example about helicopter fuel. We heard it when I was down in the Hawke’s Bay. There were some stories—and it was raised again today—about people on private choppers coming in and rescuing people off their roofs. Helicopter fuel is expensive, and it would seem a bit unfair if we didn’t also have the opportunity to reimburse people who have gone out of their way, taken significant risks and costs on board, and, in the process, saved people’s lives.

Now, I want to come to a few comments that were made. The Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment (MBIE), in particular, has been quite critical of the process here. The officials there consider that vital changes weren’t considered and that there were flaws in this. They’re opposed to certain parts of it and they want to see removed or dealt with, and what wasn’t immediately clear—there was no one agency being held responsible for critical infrastructure systems. We have been unable to set national risk tolerances and standards, and that should have been built into it. A number of critical sectors are not subject to regulation, and there are many critical services—obviously you have your transport, and you have your ambulance services which is being brought in here, which is good. But in the modern technological age that we live in, we didn’t see cloud services involved, we didn’t see data-storage centres, and we didn’t see supply chains addressed.

They did also note that New Zealand is a bit behind some of our contemporaries who have got more developed systems, so there was the opportunity there to go and learn what other countries were doing in their emergency management response plans and to then incorporate that as much as possible into, obviously, a uniquely New Zealand setting. They saw that telcos were not prioritised as critical infrastructure during the recent events, and that’s quite astounding, given that that is what a huge part of our life does revolve around. People are on their phones, and obviously there’s the emotional trepidation and angst that everyone would face—and did face—as communities were cut off, people were evacuated, and there were just reports coming in and out of catastrophic situations and people being unable to account for loved ones.

We do also note MBIE’s deep concerns about the two-wave approach. They wanted to launch one big wave of reform, instead of the two parts that this is doing. They said that there are significant risks in the proposals in the paper that they may not lead to all the outcomes the National Emergency Management Agency is seeking, and some of the proposals could lead to compliance costs without any real general benefit to New Zealanders.

What we don’t want to be doing is burdening people in red tape and costs unnecessarily. The focus should always be on what the outcomes and benefits will be and on driving those as hard as possible. So as we move forward, I’d also note that the electricity, telecommunications, and port companies are also opposed to this, and they did reiterate the point I have just made around red tape and costs.

Officials have also advised the Government that they need new powers to gather information on risks and vulnerabilities—I mean, this is just the first reading, so we will move to a select committee stage, and there will be the opportunity there for the Government to take on board the submissions, which will inevitably come in from a range of key stakeholders. It’s really important that those are listened to and that we get this right, because we will have further emergencies and disasters in New Zealand.

We need to learn from what has happened. We have had a terrible start to this year, and we need to make sure that when the next event happens, we are best placed as possible. I would like to think that we can get to a stage where we have widespread, bipartisan support, because disasters don’t choose when they come. They don’t care whether it’s National or whether it’s Labour in power, so we need to make sure that we are all on the same page on this and we can get to a place that ultimately looks after those communities that are impacted when natural disasters and emergencies hit. So we oppose this bill at the first reading. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Kia orana, Madam Speaker. Meitaki maata for the opportunity to take just a short call on the Emergency Management Bill this morning, which improves and modernises the civil defence and emergency management law but, more importantly, it retains that responses are locally led, regionally coordinated, and centrally supported.

In the Ōtaki electorate, we’ve also had experiences with the severe weather events lately. Last year, we had a hurricane that ripped through Levin, and a couple of months ago, we had a hurricane that hit Paraparaumu. The quickness of the civil defence and emergency management teams, which were locally led, were able to get together, and get out to their communities—they know how to message out to their communities. They know how to quickly get those messages of support out, and they’re also supported by Government with funds that went to the mayoral fund.

That is the key for me in this bill—to continue to make sure that we know that locals know how to locally lead, and, as a Government, we come and support. That is what this bill does. I commend it to the House.