Severe Weather Emergency Recovery Legislation Bill

Thank you, Mr Speaker. After consultation with the Business Committee, I seek leave to present a legislative statement on the Severe Weather Emergency Recovery Legislation Bill.

💬 SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none. That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

We’ll just take a moment and I will ask those members who are leaving to do so quietly and expeditiously, the Hon Andrew Little included—you can’t even hear me! Yeah, please leave.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move, That the Severe Weather Emergency Recovery Legislation Bill be now read a second time.

I’d like to thank the members of the Governance and Administration Committee for their bipartisan and collaborative consideration of the bill and, in particular, Ian McKelvie, the chair of the committee, for his steady steering of the ship. I also want to acknowledge and express my thanks to parties across the House for the cross-party support this bill has received. I appreciate the support for the bill’s efforts to support communities impacted by the recent devastating severe weather events.

The purpose of this omnibus bill is to assist local authorities and communities in areas of the North Island affected by Cyclone Gabrielle and Cyclone Hale and the heavy rain events in the upper North Island. I want to acknowledge the widespread and ongoing impacts of the damage on so many Kiwis and the communities that they live in.

I was heartened that the expressions of cross-party support for the bill during the first reading speeches were carried through into the work of the committee. The committee backed up the similar efforts on the Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Act. Its thorough and careful deliberations mean that the bill is appropriately placed to support Kiwis affected by the severe weather events.

This bill represents a vital part of our commitment to supporting a timely, effective recovery for those affected by the recent severe weather events. It follows on from the recent enactment of the Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Act. This legislation package complements the work done on the ground to assist communities in the immediate aftermath of the severe weather events.

The bill proposes allowing Orders in Council to be used to amend legislation where this would support more timely recovery efforts in affected areas. The flexibility provided by Orders in Council will help communities react more quickly to the range of issues that could arise during recovery efforts in a way that best suits the needs of each community.

The bill contains a range of safeguards to ensure the flexibility provided by enabling Orders in Council is used appropriately. One of the safeguards is a community engagement process on draft Orders in Council that must be followed, barring only the most exceptional of circumstances.

There are also review processes that must occur, including oversight by an independent panel headed up by a former or a retired High Court judge. A draft Order in Council also cannot unjustifiably limit rights and freedoms in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, or amend key legislation forming part of our fundamental democratic and constitutional arrangements. This key legislation includes the Constitution Act, the Electoral Act, and, of course, the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. In addition to the safeguards, there are transparency obligations on Ministers to publish the reasons for the making of any Order in Council and to keep any orders made relating to their portfolio under review.

The bill makes amendments to the Local Government Act 2002, the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act, and the Resource Management Act that cannot wait for the Order in Council mechanism by this bill. These amendments ensure those Acts do not unduly impede ongoing recovery effort.

Despite the short process, the committee’s call for submissions from interested parties and the general public received a remarkable 204 submissions. Some of these submitters also made oral submissions. I want to thank all submitters for taking the time to participate in the select committee process and for the efforts they’ve put in to submit their views on the bill in a short time frame.

I’ve heard and wish to acknowledge the substantive concerns raised by submitters that, in their view, the bill is undemocratic and that it grants the Government far greater power than is needed. Submitters were also concerned that the truncated time frame meant that there was insufficient time for submissions to be made and for proper select committee scrutiny.

I want to re-emphasise that these powers are only given to the extent needed to support recovery efforts and are not given lightly, and only because swift action is needed to support and enhance communities’ recovery efforts. The Order in Council process is the most efficient way to do this. The bill is modelled on legislation passed after other emergencies such as the Hurunui-Kaikōura earthquake. The framework for the exercise of these powers remains broadly similar to their exercise in those situations, but some improvements have been made. For example, there is no ouster clause, which means courts retain the power to test the Minister’s recommendations and decisions. With great power comes great responsibility, which is why the safeguards I’ve just outlined are designed to ensure these powers are carefully and appropriately exercised.

I also wish to acknowledge the points raised by my colleagues in this House during the first reading of the bill, regarding the number of members on the panel. The bill allows for up to 12 members, and there was concern that this was too many. In my opinion, up to 12 members is about right, considering the geographical spread of the affected areas and the range of knowledge, expertise, and experience to be represented on the panel. The panel can sit in divisions to ensure it can effectively and efficiently review the draft Orders in Council.

This bill is just one aspect of the recovery, and I note that the Government has committed to ensuring local perspectives are included in recovery, including those of iwi and Māori.

Because the select committee period was so short, the committee reported the bill back to the House un-amended. However, the committee did make recommendations for improvements in their commentary on the bill. I intend to propose a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) to address some of the issues raised by submitters and to incorporate some improvements suggested by the committee.

The SOP adds the Manawatū-Wanganui Regional Council, trading as Horizons Regional Council, and the Wellington Regional Council, trading as Greater Wellington Regional Council, to the list of local authorities affected by the severe weather events. This recognises that sufficient damage has occurred in parts of territorial authorities that fall within their regional boundaries. Adding these regional councils to the list will allow them to amend their regional plan documents where needing to, for example, enable flood protection or bridge repair works.

I’ve looked carefully at the membership of the panel. The purpose of the panel is not to provide representation of various interests, but to bring the knowledge, experience, or expertise in the matters listed to bear when considering draft Orders in Council. Another requirement set out in the SOP would mean the Minister responsible for panel appointments would also have to consider appointing members with expertise in health protection; primary industries; emergency management, including resilience; and rural interests. The Minister will also need to consider appointing members with local perspectives of Māori communities in the affected areas, including mātauranga Māori, tikanga Māori, iwi, and hapū.

The SOP also ensures that Orders in Council can only deal with new subject matter if doing so is reasonably necessary to achieve the purposes of the order and that orders are no broader than geographically necessary. The relevant Minister must now provide draft orders to the Regulations Review Committee in all circumstances, unless Parliament is dissolved or has expired, and the Minister can extend the time frame for comments from the Regulations Review Committee.

I consider the changes proposed in this SOP will enhance the protections in the bill against the inappropriate making of Orders in Council and will allow for the right balance to be found in respect of panel composition.

Finally, I note that the committee strongly supported a review of the bill, once enforced, to more fully scrutinise the powers granted under it, given the short time frame in which the bill has progressed. I acknowledge this proposed method of parliamentary oversight and invite the appropriate select committee to conduct such a review at the most suitable time after the bill comes into force. I look forward to this House’s contribution during the committee of the whole House stage, and I’m pleased to commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I intend to use this second reading speech to address the issues the Governance and Administration Committee considered during the course of its quite brief but lengthy—lengthy in time—hearings.

I’ll start today by making a few observations about the process used to introduce and process this urgent piece of legislation, which came in for some critical scrutiny from both submitters and some sectors of the media. That criticism was to some degree warranted. However, no one came up with a better way of expediting this process for the benefits of those affected. Frankly, I believe, as a select committee and as a Parliament, we’ve come to the best position possible on this. I also believe that members of Parliament come to Parliament with a very strong idea of making people’s lives better, and this is a great example of this Parliament coming together in an attempt to make people’s lives better. Admittedly, those people are suffering some significant challenges at the moment.

I could not stand here to talk today without thanking all those who worked their way through making this bill what it is today and put in place a piece of legislation that will benefit the areas and people affected by the weather events of February. The committee staff, under our minder Tui, who put in many hours to assist us to get to this point, and especially Hannah, who must have listened to every word that was said and captured them in a very good report. To our officials, who put the great effort in over the past three or four weeks, actually, developing two bills—not one but two—to deal with this emergency situation, I thank them as well. They did an amazing job, and I think it’s really interesting to have a group of officials who are very prepared to cooperate with the select committee.

I think, during the course of those hearings, we addressed most of the concerns raised by submitters—not necessarily how the supporters would want us to, of course. I hope in saying that, that those submitters are more comfortable with the process than they were at the time that submissions were called for. I also want to thank those submitters who made the effort under extreme urgency to provide the select committee with some very good submissions which helped shape this bill as it has come back to Parliament.

It interested me, however, that some submitters made a significant effort with very little resource to provide us with very good information and very good submissions, and others appeared to use the process as a grandstanding exercise, basically, to criticise the Government for the urgency required to act in this instance. I think that’s very disappointing, particularly as those organisations tend to be well resourced.

I’ve probably said in this House before that I was the Mayor of the Manawatū at the time of the 2004 flood event which devastated our region, and I know that any help forthcoming gives local communities great hope and it also gives local communities, I think, hope that someone in Wellington cares. I think it’s important that this House puts in place a piece of legislation that will assist quite a large number of people in those communities. I think that is the least we can do. The fact that it’s done under urgency and with comparative haste, I think, also signals the importance of this issue to this House, and, in fact, the importance of it to those people concerned.

I must also thank the select committee and our two adopted members—Eugenie Sage and Simon Court—who may not agree entirely with the position we ended up in but, none the less, added great value to the discussions. I also thank Minister McAnulty for tolerating many of the sentiments we expressed, and addressing them in his second reading speech.

I’ve no fears the seemingly unwarranted power we’re granting to Ministers will be abused, and I’m confident that local communities will benefit greatly from the enactment of this legislation. It also means roads, bridges, water pipes, houses, farms, orchards, and even railway lines will be reinstated much quicker as a result of this bill.

I think the important thing to remember in the course of the reinstatement—and these Orders in Council will largely deal with reinstatement—is that they’ll be reinstated in the same place they were before. So the fear that the Resource Management Act, for example, will be abused in the course of this, in my view, is minimal, and we have taken one or two other safeguards in the course of the alterations to the bill to manage that.

As I’ve said, we had many constructive submissions, and a number expressing concerns about the lack of communication with Māori. We’ve endeavoured to address this matter where appropriate. However, most of those concerns raised by submitters, in relation to the lack of communication with Māori, relate to the emergency response, not the emergency recovery. We’ll take the opportunities at select committee to raise these issues on their behalf with the appropriate parties as they all report to our select committee either through annual reviews or whatever. So there will be an opportunity for us to take those up at a later date.

Back to the bill. On the changes the select committee has made: we introduced one more safeguard with respect to the ability to make Orders in Council, and that was to ensure that geographical areas, where appropriate, are defined. The reason for that is that there’s—and I think the most obvious one—the need, or there may be the need in some cases, to burn waste, for example; there may be no other way to do it. You wouldn’t want that Order in Council to stipulate that waste could be burnt and that it could be burnt all over New Zealand, because it will almost certainly be specifically for one area. So I think that was an important change to make.

As the Minister said, the Manawatū Regional Council or Manawatū-Whanganui Regional Council, or Horizons Regional Council, as it’s known, and the Wellington Regional Council both added to the bill because a number of their constituent councils declared civil defence emergencies during the course of those events, and, of course, it would be difficult for the regional councils to not have been included in this bill, because quite a significant amount of those damaged assets actually affect regional councils as well as district councils. So that was necessary.

Another very interesting discussion we had related to the need to consult the leaders of previous Parliaments’ political parties. This comes about, of course—and it’s most appropriate now—in that this Parliament will dissolve for a time for the general election, and there will be no committees in force. And because the Orders in Councils are automatically referred to the—oh, I’ve forgotten the name of the committee—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Regs Review.

—the Regs Review, thank you, Gerry—the Regs Review Committee, that committee won’t be sitting while Parliament’s in adjournment, and it’s highly likely, I think, that these Orders in Council will be made at that time. So the need to have a body that represented this Parliament that could peruse those needed to be put in place. It was decided that the leaders of those political parties in the previous Parliament—so the Parliament’s adjourned, the leaders of the political parties in the previous Parliament then, effectively, take the place of the Regulations Review Committee until the new Parliament is convened. So that was necessary because you had to have some reference point for those Orders in Councils.

The other issue was amending clause 13(3)(a) to add to the list of matters the Minister must consider in appointing members of the review panel. That was extended to health, rural interests, and primary industries. I guess those terms were used because they—certainly, the health one was an interesting one, and I’m sure there’ll be other committee members to talk about that more later on this afternoon. So that was a change that, I think, was very useful.

Finally in this speech, I just want to talk briefly about the discussions we had with submitters, and amongst the committee, about how we could improve this process for the future. I think that the committee came firmly to the view that a more permanent piece of legislation needs to be developed which would never be the perfect platform, because disasters are all different, but, none the less, it would be a base from which the Parliament could then develop legislation in the event of future emergencies—and there’s no doubt there’s going to be plenty of them. But I think that that would allay the fears of submitters that we’re giving, effectively, what you might term as “unbridled power” to the executive. It would have to be altered per event, but, none the less, the base legislation would be there, and I think that the public would have some confidence that at least the base legislation has been given adequate scrutiny—or scrutinised in the appropriate manner—and so, therefore, it would give the public more confidence that what we’re doing in the future was good.

The National Party provide an alternative view in the committee report, and outline some of the changes which, with more time, we would have liked to have seen made in the bill. This will not, however, stop us from supporting the bill. I think, despite the fact that the system’s never perfect, this bill, for all intents, will be of great value to those areas affected by the disasters of the last few months. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m pleased to take a call on the Severe Weather Emergency Recovery Legislation Bill. The Green Party really supports the objectives of the bill in terms of assisting communities and local authorities and facilitating recovery in the areas affected by Cyclone Hale and Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland anniversary weekend storm, but we won’t be supporting the bill, because of the major override on the powers of Parliament.

Starting where Mr McKelvie, as chair of the Governance and Administration Committee, finished, I note there is a real need to develop a framework for how the Parliament responds and how the Government responds to ensure that decisions are made during a recovery which are expedited, but without the major executive override of the Parliament which this bill involves. I know that in response to Hurunui, Kaikōura, and Canterbury, there was some discussion of this and there was a decision not to proceed with the framework for emergency—well, for recovery response legislation that would provide a permanent framework. But I think the major submissions that we had by a lot of constitutional lawyers, and the New Zealand Law Society—and they described the bill as not being constitutionally appropriate and raising fundamental rule of law issues. Those are serious issues, and I feel, as an MP, quite uncomfortable, the day before a three-week recess, discussing this bill because we have not had adequate time to ensure that it sets an appropriate structure with enough checks and balances on the power of the executive.

So this further work does need to be done on how we as a Parliament respond and what safeguards are bedded in when the executive needs to use Orders in Council. Our concerns, which we expressed while supporting the bill going to select committee at the first reading, remain—that there are nearly 30 pieces of legislation which Orders in Council can amend and modify, including retrospectively back to the start of the weather emergency event, and that one of the most problematic provisions is clause 19, because that enables other pieces of legislation to be added to those which the executive can amend by Orders in Council, and that is being done not by this Parliament but by another Order in Council. So there is a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) in my name seeking to have those provisions excised from the bill and consider whether there is new legislation that needs to have Orders in Council made coming back to the Parliament.

There were over 204 submissions, and the majority of those submissions were opposed to the bill. I think, again, that underlines the need for the Parliament to look at a more enduring structure in terms of recovery. Some of the other reasons that we aren’t supporting the bill is that, as submitters noticed, it does largely appear to be for administrative convenience. Everyone wants an expeditious recovery, but officials could not say what Orders in Council are waiting to be done, and if they can’t do that, then the Parliament could’ve had a longer time and potentially be recalled over the three-week recess to deal with this more thoroughly.

There’s the issue of the very broad purpose clause, and then the fact that under clause 8 there’s a threshold for Ministers to make Orders in Council when the order “is necessary or desirable”, and while officials said that that language appears in some other legislation, that legislation is concerned with emergencies. This legislation is concerned with recovery, and as everyone in Canterbury knows, major decisions were made after the earthquakes that are having a significant impact, sometimes beneficial but sometimes—in terms of the major costs of the stadium, half a billion dollars—decisions were made during that framework which are not necessarily for the best interests of the majority of residents.

There are processes which exist in law which enable communities to participate. Those processes ensure that we get a range of opinion informing the decision. When you cut through those processes to act quickly in a recovery, when there are millions of dollars being spent that do not necessarily go to the best decision. So the concern about acting very quickly in an emergency—granted. But in a recovery, there should be “nothing about us without us”—that was a common refrain in Canterbury and equally it applies in Tairāwhiti, Hawke’s Bay, Auckland, and other areas. Communities need to be involved in those investment decisions. So where you slice through processes such as under the Resource Management Act, you don’t necessarily get that involvement.

One of the critical things that we think is missing in the bill is a real focus on ensuring that actions are taken to promote climate resilience and adaptation. So we’re seeking an addition to the purpose to do that, because the investment decisions that are made now, whether roads are repaired to a very, very high standard, means that there are opportunity costs of that. Those funds may not be available to invest in more regional rail, and regional rail is likely to provide both climate benefits and ensure that a lot of heavy traffic is taken off roads. So those sort of priorities are quite critical and we need to go through a consultative process, and our concern is that with Orders in Council there’ll be less of an ability to do that, because consultation is seen as taking too long, so the Orders in Council override that.

One point I do wish to make clear is that some submitters seem to think that the Severe Weather Events Review Panel was all about directing the recovery. It’s not. It’s about reviewing the Orders in Council. There is not a single body as there was in Canterbury that is directing the recovery itself. But this panel is only about the Orders in Council and their content.

There are too many overrides of the basic rule of law. The legislation is going through this Parliament too quickly. There hasn’t been an adequate opportunity to really improve it. There have been some suggestions that submitters made that the committee discussed, which the Minister is taking up in his Supplementary Order Paper because there was not time for a revision-tracked version. But there were a number of other suggestions in submissions that aren’t on that SOP, and I think that accounts for the range of SOPs that you have from members in other parties, including the Green Party.

So the other major issue that we have with this is that the sunset clause of allowing the Order in Council power to go on for five years is too long, that that needs to come back, and that the Parliament have the power to extend the ability for Orders in Council itself, not putting such a lengthy clause in the bill.

There will be major decisions that are made through Orders in Council. One that we have a particular concern about is in the waste space. In Canterbury, it was an Order in Council around the storage, sorting, and processing of earthquake waste at the Burwood Resource Recovery Park. There was not nearly enough emphasis on reuse of houses that were damaged—reuse and recovery and reprocessing of materials. And similarly, there are likely to be significant issues around waste management here. They need to go through a good process so that we are maximising materials’ reuse and recovery, and not just sending everything to landfill. Big issues, and we were pleased with the change that the select committee recommended around potential health impacts with people suggesting that the slash will be burned, and the smoke and respiratory impacts that that will have. So the panel will at least now have to have someone with that health protection expertise.

There have been some additional safeguards, but still there is this fundamental issue with nearly 30 pieces of legislation having Orders in Council that can be developed with some consultation by the Minister, with some scrutiny by the panel, but not enough public engagement. And those who think that the Regulations Review Committee is an effective safeguard should remember that that committee—which I’m a member of—rarely looks at whether Orders in Council meet with the purpose of the Act. They don’t go into any of the substantive policy issues, and it’s the substantive policy issues which some of these Orders in Council may allow that we are particularly concerned with. So the Green Party—despite the very good chairing of Mr McKelvie of the Governance and Administration Committee and the very collegial approach in that committee—cannot support the bill because it raises fundamental rule of law issues, and it doesn’t have enough safeguards.

The ACT Party cannot support this Government’s Severe Weather Emergency Recovery Legislation Bill. It gives the Government “Henry VIII” powers to modify 27 Acts of Parliament for purposes that may go well beyond cyclone recovery. ACT says that that alone is unacceptable and is a reason to oppose this bill—despite all of the good intentions that the Government, ACT, National, and the Green Party had, sitting around the committee table with officials, hearing from submitters and trying to work out what the important things are that people in the Hawke’s Bay, Gisborne, Wairoa, Northland, Auckland, and, of course, the Manawatū-Whanganui region need in order to recover from the cyclone. Well, what ACT said, back on 6 March, “Here are 15 good ideas”—urgent ideas they were on 6 March, only a month after Cyclone Gabrielle hit. None of those ideas has been taken up by this Government.

The committee received high quality submissions: from the Law Society, from the New Zealand Initiative, from constitutional and public law experts, from Federated Farmers, and, of course, from Civil Contractors New Zealand, who represent the people who will actually be doing the work with the diggers, with the trucks, cleaning up silt and demolishing all of those structures and getting ready to rebuild after the cyclones and severe weather. What many of them asked for was, “Please speed it up. Please hurry up. This has taken far too long.” All we have here today is an omnibus bill, a bill that grants extraordinary powers to the Government but actually provides no certainty, no frameworks for economic recovery, no formulas that would help people who are flooded out of their homes in places like West Auckland or Hawke’s Bay understand, if they have to leave their properties, if it’s too dangerous to rebuild, what the formula is that they could expect to see that would help them to understand what compensation they might receive if they have to leave their land and property, where they could go, and, of course, what would make it easier to rebuild, because currently the Resource Management Act makes it very, very hard to consent and build new developments. None of those things is addressed in this bill.

Twenty-seven Acts of Parliament could be amended for any reason, at any time, in the next five years, by a Minister in a Government, with only three days’ review by a panel. Now, ACT suggested—in fact, we provided an amendment, which we hope to debate at the committee of the whole House stage, which proposes to include on that panel representatives from the rural community and people with infrastructure experience. We also proposed that, if there is going to be legislation like the COVID-19 emergency response legislation or the legislation that guided the recovery from the Kaikōura-Hurunui earthquakes and the Christchurch and Canterbury earthquakes sequence, that legislation comes back to Parliament every 90 or so days, at a maximum, for Parliament to debate whether it was actually effective, whether those measures were helping, the costs and benefits, what could be learned, and so that the Government also had an ability to table amendments to its own recovery legislation that it might want to table, and have the scrutiny of Parliament to do that.

What we also propose, through amendments, which came out of submissions we heard at select committee, is to protect private property, because one of the problems that we’ve heard about is that many people, including 50,000 in Auckland, live in homes built on flood plains, and it may not be possible to rebuild in those locations. We’ve been hearing from this Government and from experts and insurance companies about managed retreat, which means some people will have to leave their properties and the homes will have to be demolished, but what we don’t know is how they will be compensated. So that’s why the ACT Party says there needs to be a compensation mechanism, and that needs to be in terms of the existing Public Works Act.

But I just want to come back to the committee stage and the report that the Governance and Administration Committee has provided back to the House and for the people of New Zealand to read. I just want to run through some of the things that ACT felt were important to highlight out of that report. Now, despite declaring a climate emergency in 2020, this Government has done nothing to prepare for the response to the inevitable natural disasters that will befall New Zealand. We’ve had cyclones and storms—in the past two decades, we’ve had severe, devastating earthquakes and landslides that have killed hundreds of people. Large parts of New Zealand will be affected by what could be almost an inevitable earthquake on the Alpine Fault, and of course there are many communities in New Zealand built in places where, historically, tsunami have devastated them—and in fact, wiped out entire communities. And yet there is nothing in this bill; the Labour Government has done nothing since declaring a climate emergency in 2020 to actually deliver legislation that sets out how New Zealand might recover from a disaster in future, when we can all safely assume there will be one.

But that’s not to say the work hasn’t been done. The New Zealand Initiative submitted to the committee, although, as they pointed out, 20 hours to prepare and submit a written proposal—which was all this Government gave them—was not sufficient. They pointed to a document that they prepared in 2018: Recipe for disaster: Building policy on shaky ground. They were referring to how flawed it was that every time there’s a natural disaster, a Government comes along and says, “Don’t worry, we’re going to cook up some new disaster emergency response legislation. Whether we’ve learnt from past disasters or not, here’s something that needs to be passed under urgency”. What the initiative said is, look, post-disaster plans should recognise not only the importance of clarity about the infrastructure rebuild—that’s the roads and other essential utilities—but it should also facilitate organic economic development in a way that the local community wants to; not have it imposed, top-down, from the Government. And that is one of the risks of this legislation: that a Minister with best intentions—or maybe not—could come up with an Order in Council that says “Here’s what a region is going to get.” Would it be a convention centre; a swimming pool; a stadium? Who knows—but how on earth would a Minister in Government know, unless it comes as a direct request from the locals, from local government, or from the regions? That’s what’s missing in this bill.

The Initiative also points out “a recovery agency should be set up expeditiously.” Well, what we do know is that the Government has appointed Sir Brian Roche to go and investigate what needs to happen. Well, there’s a gentleman who has represented the Government and other agencies at the highest level and has competencies around infrastructure, governance, and management, and yet, we haven’t heard from Sir Brian Roche. We haven’t heard from his cyclone recovery working group or committee. We have no idea what is planned in terms of a recovery agency.

What local people—like Gisborne farmer, Charlie Reynolds, who I spoke to this morning—are asking for, Minister, is: please, speed it up. Please provide a framework so that people know exactly what recovery will look like and what their part in it is, whether they are private contractors, rural landowners, homeowners, or business owners; people who own packhouses and orchards. What Charlie Reynolds told me today is that many of his friends who are farmers spent weeks trying to pull stock out of mud, trying to get access back to their farms. They didn’t have internet access, and then it turns out, when they finally got online to apply for the $10,000 that they’ve been told that they will get immediately, it could be weeks and weeks and weeks before they even receive an acknowledgment of their inquiry—because, it turns out, thousands and thousands of people have applied for this funding.

So what ACT would say to the Government is, “Please get on with it.” Please provide some clarity to people who are suffering following these disasters; whether it’s the people in West Auckland who are red-stickered out of their homes, or people of Hawke’s Bay who just want to know whether they’ll be able to keep orcharding and keep packing fruit in the future; even though it’s three years until the trees come back. And what about the people of Northland who are cut off, again, by a massive slip in the Mangamuka Gorge? All of these communities need answers, Minister—this bill doesn’t provide them. ACT says, “Get on with it.”

I’m extremely disappointed by the speech that’s just been delivered, and I’ll tell you why. It lacks the sort of electoral ambition that I would’ve thought would’ve been more to the fore from a party like ACT. We could be, in six months’ time, in a situation where, Mr Court, you’re the Minister, so think about that list of things that you’ve just suggested—that Mr Court has just suggested, Mr Speaker—should be done by the Government. What would be the levers that would let him be able to do that? All this bill does is make way for good things to happen for people who need relief and need encouragement and need to be able to be certain about the activities they take for their recovery.

I have listened over and over for a very long time to the people who say this type of bill confers “Henry VIII” powers, it’s a constitutional outrage, etc., etc. Well, it’s Parliament that’s doing it, and that makes a whole lot of their arguments fall to one side. I heard the previous speaker, Ms Sage, saying that this was a dreadful thing and she wants to take out clause 19 because that would allow other Acts of Parliament to be brought into the regime and altered through the Order in Council process. Well, if Parliament decides today that that’s what’s necessary to keep things moving in a recovery, then that is, under our arrangements, constitutionally acceptable. I just get so annoyed by people who sit in their cloistered environments having no idea of what it’s like for people who are on the end of the worst effects of this disaster.

So we are supporting this legislation. There are a number of things in the minority view that the National Party have appended to the Governance and Administration Committee report which make it clear that there are aspects we don’t agree with. There are some things that we would’ve liked, but it would be completely churlish to turn round and say we’re not going to vote for this, and it would be a withdrawal of support for the people who are so adversely affected not only now but will be for literally years to come in the areas that are affected by or covered by this bill.

I was surprised too to hear the suggestion, really from the last two speakers, that decisions that might be made under this bill will be sort of rushed and ill-considered and that that would lead to decisions that were bad and didn’t end up having a great positive outcome. Well, I can think of 100,000 houses, three waters, the media merger, the polytech debacle, health waiting list, and six out of 10 kids not going to school every day—all decisions made under the proper provisions of Parliament and are a mess. So, no system that you might choose to use is going to guarantee that all decisions that are made as a consequence of a piece of legislation are going to be perfect.

I’ve got to say, too, my experience has been that if a decision is made, it creates a degree of certainty. Even if it’s not the best decision, it creates a degree of certainty. If it can go one step further and provide a degree of choice for the people who are on the end of whatever it is that the decision is about, then that makes it just all the more palatable. So I think the idea that we should be having some sort of a perfect piece of legislation is absolute nonsense.

The only thing I’d agree with Mr Court on is that this fails to recognise that there needs to be some single source of accountability for the recovery. At the moment, it’s far too diffused. The member raised the issue of, well, who’s making a decision about managed retreat, for example. It’s a huge issue. It’s got massive effect, potentially, on other parts of New Zealand for all sorts of other conditions geologically that people face in their place of occupation, and it does need to be managed in the context of this disaster so that we don’t get that unintended consequence of all sorts of other things. But there’s nothing clear that you could point to and say, well, that’s where the go-to place is for all of these sorts of problems, and that’s something that would have to be rectified. That’s something you could do, Mr Court, in the future, perhaps, in a role such as this.

For all of its faults, this is a bill that does enable those who have responsibility to move things forward. It is far from a situation where a Minister wakes up in the morning with a good idea, decides to change a piece of legislation, gets it all written up, flicks it through a process, and gets it done, as would’ve been the case under Henry VIII times. It has got layers of accountability in it, and I think those, while they are expeditious, are appropriate to make sure that the people who need this legislation to get on with their lives are able to do exactly that. That’s why we’re supporting the bill today.

Can I thank the Hon Gerry Brownlee for his contributions—other than the gibes in respect of non-emergency recovery achievements of the Government, I endorse his comments.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: I didn’t call them achievements.

I beg your pardon?

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: I didn’t call them achievements.

No, you didn’t call them achievements—a lack of generosity there, given the number of houses we’ve built and progress we’re making on other things like child poverty and reducing carbon emissions. Those are, of course, all irrelevant to this bill, as were the member’s comments.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Talk to me, Mr Parker.

I thank the select committee for the improvements that they’ve made to the bill, particularly, making it clear that the review panel should be chaired by a High Court judge. I think that the panel including a High Court judge gives it more credibility. I think New Zealanders can be satisfied that they’ll guard the proper boundaries of orders being necessary in terms of the purpose of the legislation.

I do share a little concern that, as we base these emergency responses on the last emergency response, the lists of enactments that are affected in Schedule 2, which now lists 29 Acts directly and then makes reference to others, seems to grow ever longer and doesn’t ever seem to be pruned.

Perhaps agencies can have a look at that outside of the exigencies of an emergency and think about whether, for example, you need to include the Land Transfer Act in an order such as this. I understand what the Land Transfer Act was included post-earthquakes in Canterbury, because there was an issue as to what you did for boundary adjustments. I’m not sure that that was under the Land Transfer Act or survey legislation, but I do think that we have to take care that we’re not unnecessarily extending the ambit over which the Orders in Council can be passed amending the primary legislation, because it something that should be done sparingly, only when necessary, and conferring the power on the executive to do it ought to be constrained to the extent reasonably possible.

That said, I also endorse the Hon Gerry Brownlee’s comments and, I’m sure, Minister McAnulty’s comments as well, that this is necessary to do at speed in order for the recovery steps to be taken.

In respect of my own responsibilities as Minister for the Environment, there are two obvious examples of where it’s likely to be necessary to have Orders in Council. One is to override some plan provisions requiring consents. We’ve had this discussion in this House about how the current plans in the area prohibit absolutely the burning of tanalised materials. You can’t avoid that in some circumstances, when you’ve got a pile of debris, which includes the occasional fencepost that’s tucked in the middle that you can’t see, it’s just not practical to enforce that rule in this context. So there’s likely to have to be an Order in Council enabling that if there’s not some other route to enable it already in the Resource Management Act or in the local plans.

The other one is that we’re going to have to, on occasions, truncate plan-making processes, where we’re going to have to rezone land either for or against use. Those processes have a lot of public participation and time baked into them—which is appropriate, given that the affect local people’s private and public property rights—but, sometimes, in a situation such as this, you have to move a bit more speedily in order to create the recovery opportunities for the populations that have been affected by these severe flooding events. So those are two examples where I think Orders in Council are likely to be necessary.

In respect of the point that the Hon Gerry Brownlee made about who makes the decisions about managed retreat if that does prove to be necessary in some of those issues, Cabinet takes those decisions. I can assure the House that Cabinet is well alert to the public and private interests involved and the complexity of those issues, the effect that that can have on people’s lives, and the possible precedent effect. So all of those issues are and will be carefully considered. Accordingly, I endorse this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I concur with the last speaker, David Parker, and also Gerry Brownlee’s speech in that there are a number of people that want a fast, efficient Government to actually do something to help them in their time of need. And that’s why the National Party is supporting this bill—

💬 Simon Court: Well, it’s only two months to bring this legislation to the House.

—and it needs to happen in that manner. The ACT member has just said something there, and I agree with a lot of what he said, actually, in his speech, but the reality is that when you’re a Minister in these kind of situations, 80 or 90 percent of the decisions you’d make would be the same as a reasonable person, whatever colour party you were. They are just the reasonable decisions that need to be made to help people in time of need and to rebuild. It’s not about policy dimensions necessarily. If the road to Coromandel needs rebuilding, it needs rebuilding, and that’s the reality of it. And I don’t believe that in the New Zealand Parliament those kinds of situations would be taken in a context which would be misused in that sense. So we have faith in the Labour Ministers to make those right calls, just like we expect them to have faith in us and ACT and Green and New Zealand First or whichever Ministers there may be in the future that have to make those calls at another point in time. That’s the reality of having a small Parliament and a small country—that you can actually enable that to happen.

In saying that, though, the ACT member did raise some really good issues around what we actually look at as a country about resilience. These events probably started with Christchurch as the major event that nobody had anticipated. And then you’ve got the Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne at the moment. The next one will come and it may be weather related, it may actually be biosecurity related, it may be something else, but there is something else that will come and it’s not necessarily climate change. It may be some other thing that happens, and we are not resilient as a country. We do not have plans around that, and that’s really the point, I think, the ACT member was getting across. And I agree with that 100 percent. We do not think of those things here. It’s OK to have plans of rebuild and suchlike, but we have got some foreseeable risks in this country and some risks which you can’t foresee, and I would put Christchurch in the unforeseeable sort of category. Nobody thought that was going to happen to that degree. But there are some foreseeable risks, especially around this city, that we know will happen at some point. Are we resilient around that? No, we’re not; not at all. There are foreseeable risks around the connection between Auckland and Whangārei. Are we resilient around that? No, we aren’t. There should be a decent road there and people shouldn’t have to go through little tracks to join one of our biggest cities to our major city.

Those resilience issues need to be agreed upon. That’s really what this shows. We trust Kieran McAnulty and his team to make the right calls in this case, and we will give the people of the Hawke’s Bay and the Gisborne the support they need for that Minister and other Ministers to make the right calls. We will do that. But at the same time, New Zealand needs to work out what we’re actually going to do about resilience for Northland, what we’re going to do around resilience here for our Governments, and those sort of things that are foreseeable. They’re there. You can see them. We’ve had enough events happen that you can see how Northland gets cut off from Auckland and there needs to be something done about that.

Tim van de Molen: Waikato cut off from Tauranga.

Now, Mr Tim van de Molen has gone to the next point in my speech, which was the advantage of Hamilton as providing the resilient option of no issues at all! You know, the place that will not flood, the place that will not have an earthquake, and the place that will be the safest place in New Zealand for Governments and such like. But we won’t go there too far because the reality is we’re dealing with serious issues that people are facing in their communities at the moment. But if you were actually looking at resilience, that Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga area is undervalued in New Zealand for what it can do for the resilience of this country.

💬 Ian McKelvie: It’s got the odd volcano.

Yeah, it has and, you never know, that may be the issue, as Ian McKelvie says. But that’s the option that we have as a Parliament, which is to look forward and to look at those foreseeable things and try and resolve those. There’s always going to be the unforeseeable that we can’t deal with.

So in this case, we support the Labour Party Ministers and give them the ability to do what they need to do. They don’t need three-year legislation to do that. These things need to be happening in the next couple of months—the big decisions. If you need three years to work this out, then there’s something wrong. Kieran McNulty and his team, I bet you, will have three or four big decisions they need to make in the next couple of weeks and they need to happen now. We don’t need to elongate this too long in the sense of that power base for Ministers. We also need that accountability, and it’s great for David Parker to talk about Cabinet having that role, but we don’t actually know how that would work in practice and we haven’t seen how that would be defined. All we got is Cabinet saying that they’re going to make a decision in the best interests of New Zealanders. That’s not the accountability that actually the Ministers will require by having people that they can put some pressure on to get things done. And it’s not the accountability that the public or this institution actually would require. So for the best interests of actually the Ministers making the decisions now, they need the accountability that Gerry Brownlee talked about to get things done.

So my plea is that this place actually looks at some of those foreseeable risks. We will be doing legislation like this again soon and we don’t know what it’s going to be on. But there are some things that we do know—we have risks in the economy—and we don’t do anything about it. And you can look through a couple of examples that we’ve talked about here now, and that’s really the issue that we should be putting our mind to. This is a done deal. This needs to happen. This needs to give the Ministers the ability to do what they need to do. But the reality is that we’re going to have bigger problems in the future and we need to work out how we deal with those.

Debate interrupted.