Special Debates — Inquiry into Climate Adaptation—Report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee

I move, That the House take note of the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Inquiry into climate adaptation.

The Finance and Expenditure Committee’s report on the inquiry into climate adaptation presents an extensive set of recommendations designed to comprehensively guide New Zealand’s strategic response to climate adaptation. When a notice of motion was moved in this House with cross-party support in May 2024, climate change Minister, the Hon Simon Watts, said, “an enduring and long-term approach is needed to provide New Zealanders and the economy with certainty as the climate continues to change.” Here in New Zealand, we are feeling the impacts of climate change and we are seeing more frequent and severe, damaging natural events such as flooding, storms, and landslips.

In the Upper Harbour electorate, which I represent, memories of Auckland’s anniversary floods on 27 January 2023 remain raw. Houses remain unoccupied with liabilities yet to be settled; worse, we lost lives in Wairau Valley on Auckland’s North Shore. Natural disasters are costly and we need to take steps to safeguard against loss and insure the things we value most: our communities, jobs, industries, and homes. We need to be prepared to withstand the impacts of climate change.

The adaptation framework will set out the Government’s approach to sharing the costs of preparing New Zealand for the impacts of climate change. It will help communities and businesses understand what investment is planned in their area—for example, where the council will build flood protection infrastructure—and what support will be available to help with recovery from events like slips or floods. It will also seek to improve the way we share information so everyone can make informed decisions about how they manage risks. The framework will guide decisions before a severe weather event happens and responses afterwards, meaning we won’t have to start from scratch every time.

Just on that, work by this coalition Government is already under way. One example is the centrepiece of the, dare I say, Taxation (Annual Rates for 2024—25, Emergency Response, and Remedial Measures) Bill, which has been going through the committee of the whole House stage, as viewers will know. The pending change in this bill will create a generic set of response measures that can be activated by Order in Council to provide tax relief to people affected in emergency events such as earthquakes, cyclones, and flooding. That will give greater certainty and relief sooner than legislative tax changes having to be put through the House post event. The bill also allows Inland Revenue to share information with other agencies, upon request, to help them carry out their roles in providing emergency assistance, such as the Ministry of Health.

The inquiry into climate adaptation was referred to the Finance and Expenditure Committee with the No. 1 term of reference stating, “(1) The purpose of the inquiry is to develop and recommend high-level objectives and principles for the design of a climate change adaptation model for New Zealand, to support the development of policy and legislation to address climate adaptation.” That was the No. 1 term of reference.

The committee, in its report back, recommends a climate adaptation framework that minimises long-term fiscal and societal costs, ensures predictable and fair responses for property owners, and improves access to quality climate-risk information. Key in the report back from the Finance and Expenditure Committee’s inquiry is that it included recommending to the Government that the climate adaptation framework should have the following objectives: minimising expected long-term costs; ensuring that responses and funding support to property owners, if any, are predictable, principled, fair, and rules based wherever possible; improving information flows about climate risks and responses; addressing market failures and supporting market efficiency; achieving a balance between central government leadership and community-led approaches.

Another recommendation was ensuring that people have the incentive and the ability to manage risk, reducing hardship, supporting an equitable approach, and, of course, upholding the Treaty of Waitangi. These are all explicitly explained and extrapolated in the report that’s available on the parliamentary website.

The committee strongly believes that the principles guiding the framework must include fairness and equity, national consistency, local flexibility, and accountability. It should also promote transparency, minimise moral hazard, and support evidence-based decision-making.

The report back by the Finance and Expenditure Committee calls for addressing market failures, balancing central government leadership with community-led approaches—something that’s been talked about a lot in the last two or three years—and ensuring individuals and financial institutions are incentivised to manage risks. Again, the report back stresses the importance of balancing centralised government leadership with decentralised community-led actions, promoting local empowerment, and responsiveness to unique regional and local conditions, with the committee’s report calling for explicit legislative clarity to delineate the responsibilities between local government and central government.

As an aside, the Government’s emergency response legislation this term, which will be shepherded through—

Tim Costley: I’ll be working hard on that.

CAMERON BREWER: And the deputy chair of the Governance and Administration Committee, Tim Costley, knows all about this. The Government’s pending legislation on emergency response that we will see this term will address ongoing issues as well as to where the accountability and responsibility lies and how Government, iwi, and local government can work more cohesively and effectively.

The committee believes it has fulfilled the inquiry’s purpose to develop and recommend guiding objectives and principles for the design of the climate adaptation framework. We now look forward to the introduction of the legislation required to support that framework. As the climate change Minister, the Hon Simon Watts, said back in May 2024, 10 months ago, “An enduring and long-term approach is needed to provide New Zealanders and the economy with certainty as the climate continues to change.”, and here in New Zealand we continue to see the impacts of climate change, with more frequent and severe damaging natural events such as flooding, storms, and landslips. The timing of this is perfect, it’s important, it’s critical for the Shaky Isles. So we now look forward to the introduction of the legislation required to support the framework that the select committee has recommended in its inquiry.

It’s with great pleasure, on behalf of the Finance and Expenditure Committee’s past and present members, that I commend the committee’s report to the House. Thank you.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

I recall quite clearly the Friday evening—and I’m sure that many of my colleagues in this House do—of Auckland Anniversary Weekend a couple of years ago, when the skies just opened and the water flooded down. I sat looking at our deck and it was just like a tap had opened. It wasn’t rain. I’m sure that was a common experience for many people here. My neighbours’ houses slipped away, quite literally, just a few properties down from ours in Titirangi. Roads were destroyed. Horribly, lives were lost. What we know is that those Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods were because of a huge stream of water coming in tropics, and it is highly, highly probable that it was strongly affected by climate change. Then, just mere weeks later, Cyclone Gabrielle hanging for days, it seemed, over Hawke’s Bay and East Cape, and those winds and rains just pummelling the region. Of course, that was on top of Cyclone Hale just a few weeks earlier. The loss of life was tragic. The devastation was incredible. Climate change is here, it is real, it is affecting us now, and we need to take action—action to reduce the gases that are causing climate change, and action to adapt to climate change. That is what this report is about.

What we have tried to do in the Finance and Expenditure Committee is to provide some high-level guidance as to how we should go about adapting to climate change; some principles. One critical principle—which, contrary to the previous speaker, Cameron Brewer, is not mentioned in the Government’s response to our report—one critical feature is: ensuring that the Treaty is honoured, that we take notice and that we use mātauranga Māori and that we actually contemplate the particular issues for Māori that are caused by climate change. Mātauranga Māori will tell us about the climate, the knowledge of 1,000 years here. It tells us where the flood plains are, where the weak points are. Mātauranga Māori has that knowledge that we can use. The particular issues concern Māori land, some of it more fragile than land that is held by those of us who’ve come to this country later. It concerns urupā. It concerns Māori communities that need to be moved. We must take explicit mention of Māori in our response.

Despite the Government saying that we have to have a commitment to, I guess, fairness in terms of the costs that are paid, in the Government’s response, we need to see more of an analysis based on a word that is hardly ever used in New Zealand: class. Poor people are already hit harder by climate change. Poor people already live in areas where housing is cheaper, housing that is cheaper because it is on flood plains or in areas that are swampy that are already affected. To try to run a response to climate change that does not take notice of the fact that some people are affected worse than others because the property they hold can’t be sold—that is critical. If we think about South Dunedin, a poor community that people buy in to because that’s where they can afford housing, because they can’t afford to go up on to the hills, then they are already impoverished by our social systems and will be impoverished further by climate change. We must take notice of social equity in our response to climate change.

Above all, we must enable people to take action. That’s why those data flows are important. The simple actions that people can take every day so that they feel empowered, and the big action assessing the risks for the future.

So that’s what we need to see: attention to Māori, attention to class, and attention to information. That’s what I’m looking for from this Government.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Yeah, I think it’s appropriate that we’re discussing this today, given that it’s been two years and one month since the anniversary of the North Island severe weather event—as the previous speaker, the Hon Dr Deborah Russell, already articulated—the Auckland floods, and then that was followed by Cyclone Gabrielle. Look, we need to acknowledge the importance of the emergency management response throughout these events, and not only the emergency management response themselves but also the clean-up crews that came to clean up the incredible damage that occurred.

It’s in this context that we discuss the concept of adaptation, because adaptation is important to stop these emergency events getting even worse. Adaptation is important to make sure that we actually plan for events. We know that some communities out there are already leading and doing great mahi on the ground. I want to acknowledge the great work that the South Dunedin Future people are doing, and also local councils and regional councils, like the Otago Regional Council’s climate change risk assessment.

We know that every dollar spent on climate adaptation saves $5 to $20 in later costs. But we also know that mitigation is still the most effective form of adaptation. Every additional degree that we go beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius means increases in the intensity and frequency of temperature extremes, exacerbating droughts, and reaching critical climate tipping points, which may become irreversible.

I’m really proud of the way that the Finance and Expenditure Committee worked together on this. I was not the permanent representative on the committee—my co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick was—but I was occasionally subbed in and I saw the committee members, of all parties and of all stripes, working together because this is an issue that we need cross-party consensus on. We’ve got an amazing template to base this on, which is the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Act. That is the template to make sure that we pass an enduring cross-party law that can actually stand the test of time and endure different changes in Government. So we’re really encouraged to hear the speech of Cameron Brewer, and we’re encouraged to hear that the Government is trying to face the issue of climate adaptation. This is something that successive Governments haven’t quite gotten right yet, and it’s still not quite there yet, but we’re here to help in the spirit of constructive engagement.

What would the Greens like to see in the zero carbon legislation, etc., in the context of climate adaptation? Well, first and foremost, we would like to see Māori centred as Treaty partners. Māori are already leading the way in many parts of New Zealand, and whenever an emergency management situation occurs, we always see Māori generously open up the marae and helping. We need to resource them and make sure that partnerships are being established to support the great work that’s already happening, whether it’s in the emergency response itself or it’s in the research base that mātauranga science can give us.

We want to see local government resourced with strong incentives, and expectations as well, to do land-use and adaptation planning. Individual risk management isn’t an appropriate way forward when we can do land-use and adaptation planning, and equity and community-led approaches must be at the heart of this. Where appropriate, of course, the market will have a role, but there are holistic and moral judgments that markets cannot consider, and inequities that a purely market individualised-risk approach would exacerbate. Equitable and community-led approaches would also avoid the problem that centring a solution based on minimising long-term financial costs would create. We need to incorporate social and environmental costs rather than just relying fundamentally on bottom-line issues.

As one of the famous lines in New Zealand goes: show me the money. Now who will pay for this? We need to make sure that it is the people most responsible for climate change who pay. A model where the exacerbator pays is more appropriate with a course of adaptation, as is managed retreat rather than trying to move to a beneficiary-pays model, which doesn’t actually account for historical inequities and—as the previous speaker articulated—class inequities that might have occurred.

So, in summing up, we’re encouraged that the process has gotten this far. We’re encouraged that the Government is extending the olive branch, and we really want to work with the Government and work with all parties on one of New Zealand’s most critical climate issues. Kia ora.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I wanted to acknowledge Cameron Brewer for bringing this document to the House today. I think it’s a wonderful document. I haven’t had the luxury of the time to read it all, but I do acknowledge Cameron Brewer and his team. Madam Speaker, as you’d acknowledge, I’m not a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, but periodically, as the previous speaker, Francisco Hernandez, just mentioned, I sit in on the process and I’m cognisant of the very many issues that the member Cameron Brewer opened up on in his 10-minute speech in terms of climate adaptation.

A couple of notable points, if I can: I think we all agree, in the world of equanimity being the rule of the universe, we have two opposing forces. There’s going to be an outcome, and sometimes it’s the coastline of New Zealand. And New Zealand is a wonderful little country but it is subject to all manner of geological forces, including climate change. Out of interest, I thought I would learn a little bit on the hop, as you do, and try to ascertain what the length of the coastline was and the areas that are subject to coastal erosion, which comes up all the time, especially in this report. It’s 15,000 kilometres in length. It’s one-third the length of Australia, so there you are, for those that like numbers. Just to add a little bit more context, there is nearly 270,000 square kilometres of a little wee country that has all manner of coastal erosion to be dealt with. We have earthquakes, plate tectonics, and obviously volcanism. That’s our story in New Zealand.

The real questions are—as I rightly point out, I’m not a member of this committee, but I’m cognisant of the issues that have been brought to the House today—how do we pay for it all? How do we, equally, protect the property rights of those most affected? And that is the reconciliation that I think Cameron Brewer and his team are grappling with—no easy challenge, no easy feat, but I am sure, with people of a like mind in that committee, they will work through what climate adaptation looks like.

Now, I think we agree on a couple of things. Climate adaptation and how we ameliorate the things to do with climate change happen in two sort of fashions. You know, climate change, by virtue, is either a gradual thing, depending on the geography and the area that you are surrounded by, or, in the case of coastal erosion, inundation can happen very, very quickly. So the real issue is: how do we put the protective mechanisms in place, the right regulatory barriers, the right investment strategies—and it could involve private sector - public partnerships—that help people that have a reluctance to move to invest in seawall technology or who could invest in levies for drainage and irrigation? All of that is something that we have to reconcile.

A couple of notable points that my colleague Simon Court, who would normally be talking on such things, did sort of elucidate and offer to me: we can’t have extreme examples as being the template of how we work through this. Periodically, we do have extreme weather events, and we can’t afford, as a Parliament, to overly politicise them. More importantly, as Simon Court rightly pointed out to me in discussion, it’s how we deal with the continuation of climate change—it’s been going on a long time—and, evidently, as populations move into areas which are more heavily affected by it. We as a Parliament and the people that we represent have to balance those realities. So I’ll tie off there—it was an absolute privilege, again, to share a few thoughts, and I thank Mr Brewer and his very capable team—

Hon Member: Cameron Brewer?

MARK CAMERON: —Cameron Brewer—for bringing this very important document to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Inquiry into climate adaptation. It was a very complex thing to be a part of. There are many views out there on the climate. There are long-term and short-term implications, but the exact nature and magnitude are uncertain, and what I would like to say today in this House is that some of the modelling that is used around the country—we have this ridiculous representative concentration pathway 8.5, worst-case scenario model that is being used that is, basically, crippling the country. Using modelling like that will not get us forward here in New Zealand.

This legislation—what’s going to be formed later in 2025—is something this report will inform, so we’re really happy that the recommendations and the guiding principles and objectives that have been put forward will help that piece of legislation.

But, again, we in this country will not change the climate profile. We’ve got to be thinking about practical solutions. New Zealand First, as a party, are against pollution. We do not want to see our waterways wrecked; we don’t want to see our air or soil destroyed. We want to look after those things, but we’ve got to be practical about what we actually do. When you think about some of the issues that are happening around New Zealand at the moment, and if you go back in the decades around river control and getting a digger in and actually digging out and getting gravel extraction, we’re actually creating problems for ourselves by not allowing simple, practical things to be delivered.

I’m proud to be part of New Zealand First. Through the Provincial Growth Fund and the Regional Infrastructure Fund, we have put money into practical projects like river protection. Through the Parliamentary Library, I did a bit of research, and there have been over a hundred projects that those funds have actually gone into. Even if I think about where I’m from in Marlborough, it’s just simple projects in Spring Creek, for instance, where protection is needed, which will save a colossal amount of damage if the work isn’t done. So New Zealand First is about those practical responses.

Also, water storage: we know that some areas of New Zealand are getting drier and some places are getting wetter, and, again, it’s using common sense in water storage and getting that into the right areas and investing into those right areas. So this response will form a framework and, again, what I want to emphasise is it’s about risk and actually getting that balance right.

Through the submissions, we did hear about South Dunedin and also the West Coast, and with the Hon Mark Patterson, who is next to me, we actually travelled to the West Coast and talked to their council, and the planning that they need to do in certain areas to move infrastructure is something that the Government also needs to be well aware of and a part of that conversation. Through the inquiry, we heard about who should pay, whether it should be Government, local government, or individuals’ insurance—so it’s getting that balance right.

Also, one of the most important things is accessing information and who holds that data. That’s going to be critical, and it’s got to be information that’s easily accessible to everybody. We’ve had the experience, again, where I live in the Marlborough Sounds, of seeing the climate change, and the roading and the infrastructure that got destroyed there. But, again, it’s about the practical solutions and working on ways to resilience in doing a better way forward.

We heard also through here from the submitters, and I’ll just thank them. We had nearly 350 unique submitters, and nearly a thousand in total, but the one thing I want to do in my final 20 seconds is to go to the Ombudsman’s information for us. He actually talked about a playbook and he talked about setting high levels of rules that were understood by everyone, including central government and local government, and, to me, that is what we all need. We want certainty and we want to know what actually happens when a disaster hits.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. First of all, I’d like to also commend the Finance and Expenditure Committee for the work that they’ve done and to Cameron Brewer and, I think, Stuart Smith prior. This is the second time that we’ve had the privilege of hearing the Government recognise the upholding of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and so I want to give real accolades to that acknowledgment. A critical part of us being able to look after each other in a crisis is actually just accepting who we are and the strengths that we have.

I really acknowledge that there was the movement towards community-led solutions. Part of the problem when we’ve seen crises—and I’ve been to many of them—has been the bureaucracy and the devolvement of funds in real time. I think that going down a pathway where the inquiry has acknowledged that finance needs to be released and it needs to be community-led, locally led, is really great.

I think the framework has merit if it follows the recommendations of the climate change adaptation technical working group because I think it was really practical and they had some really great advisers. Some of the things that I’d like to go into are investment. I agree, actually, with the previous speaker, Jamie Arbuckle, that everyone is looking—and I can’t believe this is Thursday afternoon—for certainty and clarity at our worst time. I agree with the Greens that we’re at a period where we are normalising adaptation speak and mitigation isn’t a deal. It worries me that we’re giving up the mitigation speak, because there are fossil fuel implications on climate, and I just want to put that there.

But one of the things that we must do in order to reduce exposure to the at-risk communities, who are often hit the worst and take the longest to recover, is the responsibility and accountability to the regulators, those that are allowing the pollution in different aspects going on, and where the liability sits. I come from a decommissioning region where I’ve seen it done really bad and really good, so I think those are aspects that need to be considered.

I want to talk about the Provincial Growth Fund. Actually, I was on the board that that initially came from, He Kai Kei Aku Ringa. It was a Regional Development Fund economic. What would be really great is to also seek consideration for those who cannot futureproof for insurance—the businesses, the communities—and be able to look at how regional development can be done in a way that looks at adaptation, not just from a business economic sense but a social economic sense. I think the regional commissioning agency models that we see in Whānau Ora would work really well in adaptation models as well.

Some of the things that really plague Māori from being able to recover quick and rebuild things, such as papa kāinga, are the financial mechanisms. The fact that we can’t release capital for collectively owned land or for collectively owned businesses is problematic. And I think that helps economic recovery.

Government procurement processes also—and, again, I know that this is, just thinking and looking ahead, problematic; in fact, it’s damn right cumbersome, and, often, they are a wall versus a door. So I think some of these things need to be factored in when we’re looking at reducing and addressing equity. I think, also, that some of the aspects that we’ve heard and seen in some of the regional discussions post-crisis is the aspect of—and why I talk about Government procurement are these public-private iwi partnerships. And it’s been mentioned, all the way here, how iwi belong in the future planning, and I really love that mātauranga Māori has been captured by the committee. The fact that it’s ancient knowledge—and they will say things such as “Don’t change the mauri of the awa.” Now, that gets all sort of, “Oh my gosh! Culture.” Actually, what it means is, because there’s context here, we had designers from the Northern Hemisphere trying to put designs into the Southern Hemisphere. You move it too much, and there’s flooding. Those are some of the things we’ve got. So it’s lovely to hear that that’s been agreed on.

But the financial capacity to adapt long term needs to be the big aspect here. We’re making decisions today for all of our grandchildren tomorrow, so I would hope that some of those aspects are, again, captured in the framework. I’m aware that policy making is going on now, but the critical part of us being able to adapt and be able to prepare is that we loosen it up for all communities who are there firsthand and first of all, and that is a critical part of where we’ve seen that the resourcing hasn’t worked for a lot of our communities. Anyway, I appreciate all the work done. Thank you.

It is a privilege to speak today as a Government member on the Finance and Expenditure Committee on our inquiry into climate adaptation. Now, I have to, firstly, say a huge thankyou to all the members on the select committee, including our former chair, Stuart Smith, and all the former members on the select committee who worked many hours on the inquiry into climate adaptation, including Catherine Wedd, who’s always there, talking about the impact of the devastating disaster in her electorate in Tukituki. But also, too, the huge amount of work that the current members on the Finance and Expenditure Committee have been powering through.

Here I must also say a huge thankyou to the Minister of Climate Change, the Hon Simon Watts, because what he did—and this is a little story within our inquiry, where he moved a motion to refer the inquiry of the climate adaptation from the Environment Committee to the Finance and Expenditure Committee for one reason: because the Finance and Expenditure Committee includes all members from all parties in this House. This is him and our Government trying to make sure that all opinions, all voices, from all parties representing all New Zealanders have a chance to raise their opinions and have their voices heard in the inquiry for the climate adaptation. So thank you, Minister of Climate Change, the Hon Simon Watts.

Now, key findings of this inquiry: I summarised it into a few things, which were also already mentioned by the many speakers before me. Number one: the scale of the challenge for New Zealanders is enormous. Number two: there is confusion between the roles and responsibilities between central and local government, between private sector insurance, between individuals. Number three: who is paying for the challenge that we have in front of us? Number four: what about the managed retreat and also the at-risk properties? Number five: the role of Māori, and Māori communities. Number six: better data and transparency.

So what is the Government doing? From the inquiry on climate adaptation, the Government is demonstrating our commitment to ensuring that New Zealand has a comprehensive and a fair climate adaptation framework leading into the future. So in response to this inquiry, the Government is developing a 30-year national climate adaptation plan that provides a long-term direction for our country, establishing a lead agency to coordinate climate adaptation efforts. Number three: exploring new funding mechanisms, including public-private partnerships to invest in resilient infrastructure. Number four: reforming the RMA—the Resource Management Act—to ensure that future development does not occur in high-risk areas. Number five: reviewing options for a national property retreat strategy. Number six: investing in better climate data to help the many stakeholders that we have therefore mentioned.

Now, this is all the big things that we have talked about during the inquiry about what the Government is doing, but what does it really mean for New Zealanders? Because I think most people who have tuned in on TV are just interested to know, “What does it really mean for me?” So, for many Kiwis, climate adaptation may seem very far and very huge, unless it’s a disaster that hits you right on your doorstep or in your backyard or in your neighbour’s, for that perspective. But it means the impact on homeowners who need clear policies on insurance risk and retreat. It means councils need funding certainty and legal clarity so they can plan for their infrastructure. It means farmers’ land and water security have been under a lot of pressure and challenge due to climate shifts. It also means businesses need to know how to manage and plan for their supply chain disruptions and workforce stability. But it also means business, builders, and developers need certainty about where and how they can build in New Zealand.

So adaptation that we’ve been talking about is not just about responding to disasters; it is about making smarter investments today so that future generations in New Zealand can be more resilient, sustainable, and economically secure. So very, very lastly, if we do this well, across the parties across this House, we will minimise future costs and hardship, we will build stronger and safer communities, we will make decisions based on sound data and expert advice, and we will ensure that no community is left behind. So, therefore, I am very proud to be part of the team who completed this inquiry into climate adaptation. Thank you.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I’m glad that we can be in this House this afternoon to have this debate. Firstly, I really want to say thank you to the whole of the Parliament that we actually acknowledge that climate change is an issue, because we have to, of course, first admit there is a problem before we can do anything about it. So the fact we actually admit there is a problem—those who have been through Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) will know about this—we have to actually acknowledge it before we can find solutions and work together across the floor.

Stuart Smith: It’s not AA—it’s CC!

GLEN BENNETT: Yeah! In Labour, we very much want to discuss and talk about the fact around how do we work across the floor. How do we reach out across the aisle? How do we have cross-party collaboration? Because we are too small, as a nation, to fight over this. We’re too small, as a nation, to be able to afford this. And the climate is in too much of a crisis already: we haven’t got time to continue the debate and continue to be in the partisan space. We need to work together to find solutions when it comes to climate adaptation.

As I’ve read through the report and spent a couple of sessions sitting on the committee and listening to submitters, very much what I picked up was the urgency—the urgency that we must take action but also the acknowledgment that we are actually looking at how we do work together on this. Because we need to consider our children, we need to consider our young people, who are the ones who will inherit the decisions that we make today, the decisions that we make this year, the decisions that we make in this election cycle—around what the future will hold for our climate but also, of course, for our bank balance and the purse strings of the Government on the Treasury benches. How do we have the right finances in place to be able to deal with some of the huge challenges that are upon us?

I was looking through and saw that Statistics New Zealand has information about the challenge for properties—for homes—that sit close to rivers, that sit close to waterways. They predict that there are about 750,000 people and about 500,000 buildings, worth more than $145 billion, that are near rivers and on coastal areas that are exposed to extreme flooding. Now, that is a number that is mind-boggling, and that is a number that we cannot face on our own. We need to be looking at how we can work together to ensure that we find solutions. We must invest; we must make bold decisions today when it comes to mitigation but also, of course, when it comes to our carbon emissions into the atmosphere. How do we bring that down?

We live in the most beautiful part of the world. We live in this beautiful and amazing part of planet Earth, but we are so vulnerable here. We are so vulnerable as a small nation, as an island at the bottom of the Pacific. As I look at this piece of work, I’m grateful for the work that’s been done. But also, we need to consider our neighbours in this. We need to consider our Pacific whānau, because they are at risk, if not more than us, in terms of this. So it’s not only about us considering ourselves and what we do around climate adaptation; it’s also how do we be good neighbours in all of this? That’s veering off the report, I know, but it’s just a challenge to myself and to this House: how do we actually look beyond ourselves to ensure that our neighbours—that our whānau in the Pacific—are finding solutions as well?

So what is our response? This report has some thoughtful and some challenging things to say. And then what is our response? It’s around money. It’s around ensuring that we make bold decisions. It’s around the structures of councils and Governments. But one thing we need to consider is our responsibility as citizens of Aotearoa and as citizens of the world. What are we going to do in terms of looking at climate adaptation? What are we going to do today for our children and for our young people that is bold, so that tomorrow, when they step into this building, when they step in to the Treasury benches, when they look at our farms and look at our communities, that they say thank you to us as a Parliament for being bold and for doing the right thing?

It’s a pleasure to make a contribution in this unique debate today. I wish to start out by saying that climate change is here. It’s real. Businesses know it, farmers know it, our export markets know it, our Pacific neighbours know it, and our communities know it. It is a significant issue already, as we’ve heard today, and I want to acknowledge the anniversary floods caused by Cyclone Gabrielle just over two years ago.

My electorate knows it too. The Northcote electorate was one of the most impacted areas in Auckland in terms of the number of businesses and the number of homes impacted by the floods, and there were, in fact, as my colleague Cameron Brewer pointed out, two lives that were lost in the Wairau Valley area. So this an important issue for New Zealand to face.

There are, in my view, two paths forward. The first is transitioning to net zero, and this Government has, as have previous Governments, committed to the net zero target in 2050. Our Minister of Climate Change has just released our targets and our aspirations to 2035.

But the second part of this is what brings us here today, and that is mitigation and adaptation. This is the focus of the inquiry. I would like to commend the Finance and Expenditure Committee, under the current leadership of Cameron Brewer and the past leadership of Stuart Smith, for shepherding this inquiry through the House.

This inquiry really is about developing a set of recommendations for climate adaptation. It’s a model that’s a bit of a framework. It’s not the solution, but it provides us a good starting point for the future. It is about quantifying the problems for New Zealand—who is responsible for what, how to fund, understanding the risk and the allocation of risk, and the information that needs to be shared.

I myself am a practical environmentalist. I believe in pragmatic solutions to help address our environmental challenges, as do most of my colleagues, dare I say, on this side of the House. This inquiry made some really good practical recommendations around areas such as information sharing and making sure we’ve got adequate information that’s shared both locally and also at central government level. Ensuring that assets are priced according to the associated risk—really what we’re talking about here is physical assets; homes and businesses—and if I look at my electorate of Northcote, there are areas where the insurance premiums are going to go up. They’ve already gone up but they will go up to such a high rate that it makes them uninsurable. Because—guess what! A lot of our councils approved, many years ago, the building of homes where we shouldn’t have actually built them.

A third area is around incentives to reduce risk, and that is an important aspect to take as well. A fourth area is in responses and funding those responses, making sure that they are fair, predictable, rules based, and transparent. Again, I bring it back to my electorate of Northcote and the hundreds and hundreds of people who have been impacted and, to this day, suffer from mental distress because of the process they’ve had to go through. I know our Minister for civil emergencies, Mark Mitchell, has done some reports into the best way to respond to civil emergencies, to provide clarity for those who are impacted, and this report touches on that as well. Finally, it talks about the roles and responsibilities of local communities, local government, the private sector, but also the Government as well.

So, in closing, I say that this is a tool in the tool box. We don’t need more reports; we actually need action. So I’m really proud of the work this Government is doing to ensure that we thrive. I commend this inquiry to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I begin by thanking the Finance and Expenditure Committee and, in particular, Stuart Smith. I know that Mr Smith has had a long-term interest in climate mitigation and adaptation and has been part of the cross-party groups like the GlobE Network, and he is respected for his role in that.

Can I begin by just recalling it’s not so long ago that we had these rivers of rain—absolutely phenomenal rain events. I can recall, in Auckland during one of those events, I was amazed to walk just down the bottom of my street, which has got quite a slope on it, to find that there were houses flooded at the bottom where Grey Lynn Park filled up with water. The river that was on the roads was absolutely phenomenal. About seven to 10 houses have been removed just from the bottom of my street. I was one of the first that was—in fact, I think I was the first MP to go into Wairoa following the terrible events there. We flew up the Esk Valley. There’s no way the Esk Valley can be protected by flood banks, because there’s not enough room for flood banks as well as the other activities there. The tragedy in that area, and Ms Wedd’s now-electorate—you know, I remember Anna Lorck taking us around the Tukituki areas where the slash and the phenomenal waterflows had ruined so much there.

We really know enough now to know that we’ve got to follow the recommendations that are outlined in this report, which are, essentially, to protect, avoid, retreat, and accommodate. Now, in respect of the avoid, we really must be at the point where we’re going to have some pretty strict rules about new risk being placed in areas where we know there is climate risk from flooding or landslips, and we must, I think, in this House, take responsibility to make it easier for councils to make those difficult decisions. Property information memoranda ought to be able to be readily changed by a council without them facing litigation risk from people who are dissatisfied that that impediment showing up on their property record somehow affects the value of their property. We’ve got to inform the next purchaser of that land so that they can avoid risk.

In respect of accommodation and retreat, I think we need to move on from theoretical constructs and actually have some practical examples. There are some councils around the country doing some fantastic work. In particular, the one that I’m aware of—because I’m originally from there and I’ve followed it through the years—is the Dunedin City Council, with the Otago Regional Council. It is a very capable council through the decades, who have been grappling with these issues for South Dunedin. Some members of this House may not know that until the Hobson Street apartments and the like were built in Auckland, the most densely populated area in New Zealand was South Dunedin. Tiny little section sites, some of which were originally camping sites upon which houses were plonked, essentially, at ground level—ground level being within a metre of sea level. Even when I was a child, before we had the sea-level rise issues, there have always been problems with digging drains in winter in South Dunedin, because the water table is so high.

Now, the council there has done some fantastic preparatory work. They’ve already got their risk zone shown on maps, they’ve already got rules that say that if you’re going to build another building in those areas, another residential lot, it’s got to be movable. It’s got to be on piles that can be jacked up and taken away—a very practical step. They’ve now moved to identify the areas which are lowest that need to move first, and they’ve identified that they’ve got sports grounds in the area which are higher—a metre or two higher—and they’re suggesting that the lowest areas should move to the sports grounds and the sports grounds should go to the low areas. It is very, very practical work that needs a bit of help from central government—not a lot, but a little bit of help from central government—to make it happen.

In addition to that, they’ve purchased Forbury Park. Forbury Park was the lowest area. It’s a former racing area that has been closed down—an enormous area—to act as a reservoir of water in big rain events. But also, in terms of the diagram that’s shown on one of the pages here about how you accommodate climate change—and they’ve got some very interesting plans for low-cost housing on stilts so that it’s more than the flood range away. You have your car downstairs and the house is on stilts, and when you do have a big event, it’s not at risk of being flooded. That is a very practical example.

There’s another one in Westport that needs to be carried forward—the relocation of the town—and I think we have to experiment by doing now. Rather than writing more plans as to what we might do, we actually need to crack on and do it.

Look, coming from the region which was absolutely devastated by Cyclone Gabrielle, Hawke’s Bay, I was a strong supporter of this climate adaptation inquiry and I was really pleased to be part of the Finance and Expenditure Committee (FEC), which has directed some of the recommendations in this inquiry. I’d just like to acknowledge Stuart Smith, who is the former chair of the FEC, who led the committee through this work, and that must be commended, and of course Cameron Brewer, now the chair, who has brought it to the House today for us to highlight how important it is to mitigate climate change.

It is really pleasing to see the Minister of Climate Change, Simon Watts, looking at this inquiry to ensure that he directs some legislation to put in place a framework to ensure that we are prepared for climate change. It’s also great to see the cross-party support across the House on this very, very important issue. I think we all agree that it can’t come soon enough. I’d also like to acknowledge in the House that it is important that we are being smarter, because I think we all see that we cannot continue to build houses on flood plains.

I just want to take this moment to reflect on 14 February 2023, when Cyclone Gabrielle devastated the East Coast—11 lives were lost; thousands of lives were changed forever—destroying livelihoods, homes, and properties across our region. I remember flying in a helicopter across Hawke’s Bay days after the devastation, and it was harrowing, harrowing scenes. It was really, really emotional. I must say, there’s an image that has always stuck with me: it was looking down at a home and the roof of a house, and there was a hole in the roof of the house. That family had struggled to get out of that house and they’d had to push a hole into the roof and get out on the roof. They were rescued by Cameron Taylor, an incredible hero in our community, who rescued dozens of people that day.

It could have been a lot worse, Cyclone Gabrielle, but it certainly wreaked a lot of havoc across the region—some people estimate up to $14 billion worth of damage. The insurance claims alone were $1.79 billion, and the Government forked out billions and billions: roads; bridges; infrastructure; managed retreat category 3 buy-outs; silt removal and clean-up costs; flood protection; businesses, farmers, and financial assistance; and civil defence emergency pay-outs. And then there were the huge individual and private costs that are hard to quantify: the farmer clean-ups, the tracks, the diggers, the fences, and replanting crops. And then, of course, there were the uninsured properties, which of course, again, was really devastating. I was out recently with some homeowners who were uninsured, and they are still going through a lot. But the list goes on when we quantify the cost of these natural disasters.

Much of the flood protection work in Hawke’s Bay is still not complete. In fact, some of it hasn’t even started—hundreds of people in communities like Pakowhai are still waiting in limbo, because many of them are in the 2C category and work still needs to be done on the flood protection for them to be able to move on with their lives. Of course, then there’s some of those families that are still going through the category 3 buy-outs. This is incredibly stressful. That’s why it’s really, really important that we have a framework in place to mitigate the risk of climate change.

Through this inquiry, we talked about various areas; we looked into many areas. But one area—and something that we recommend in the inquiry—is looking at central government involvement versus locally led. This is something I think we need to draw on and learn from in terms of Christchurch and what happened there with a very much Government-led approach, to then Hawke’s Bay with the locally led approach. We need to take learnings from that and find a balance in between. But I’m really looking forward to this framework and the legislation that will be brought by Minister Simon Watts. Thank you.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Motion agreed to.

Report noted.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on 25 March.

The House adjourned at 5.57 p.m.