3rd Reading- Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill - Dr Kennedy Graham

Quake: CERA Bill - 3rd Reading - Ken Graham Speech


This is a rather historic moment. Apart from in wartime New Zealand I think we are passing into law arguably the most Draconian legislation ever passed by a New Zealand Parliament. I do not wish to be melodramatic, but we have experienced a dramatic event, and the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill is a dramatic bill. It has generated much heat, yet only occasionally some light—but enough light—to shine a faint torch on what we are doing here today. This bill is a dusty mirror to who we are as a society. It raises issues of an underlying nature, I think, about our national identity, our national style, and our beliefs, and I shall say more about that later. In the meantime let me make three points.


The fundamental issue at stake is that this bill accords unprecedented peacetime powers to the Government in the name of recovery from a natural disaster. Those powers are justified on the basis that extraordinary events justify extraordinary legislation, or "going the extra mile", as the Minister has just put it. That is the fundamental premise on which the Government rests its legislation. The Green Party rejects that premise and believes it has refuted it. An extraordinary event does not in itself require or justify extraordinary powers. It requires extraordinary effort—yes; extraordinary compassion—we are showing it; and extraordinary cooperation—we are getting there. It does not necessitate extraordinary powers. We are told the people of Christchurch are crying out for these powers to be rushed through, for a focused, timely, and expedited recovery. The Green Party is being told precisely the opposite. We are being told people want to engage, want legitimacy, and want to express a vision. They are being denied that under this bill. The people of Christchurch would have preferred 2 more weeks of the state of emergency so that the bill could be properly debated. So we in the Green Party are critical of the process by which this bill is being born. It says little of its genealogy and it portends badly for any progeny that might—God help us—follow.

My second point is this: why make central government sovereign over a local municipality, as this bill does? Why the overriding assumption that national government knows better than local government? We reject that notion. Local government knows its city better than national government. Has anybody heard of the Christchurch City Council aspiring to run the country? I see the seeds of the substantive problem I am identifying even within the process itself. At yesterday's select committee hearing, down south, the Christchurch City Council was essentially in disarray. The mayor was, regrettably, absent. Clearly, something more important than this legislation detained him. The councillors had never seen the draft. Some of them think they have been consulted about the concept, though this is rather unclear. The deputy mayor rather hesitatingly expressed general support, but then, in a forlorn and poignant action, the council appealed for collaboration from central government and sought a protection of its statutory powers and rights. Other councillors spoke out against the process and the substance. There was, I sensed, a touch of apprehension. That is generally how these things begin—with just a look in the eye.


My third point is that there has been a tendency, probably a decision, about mixing all phases into one in the name of justifying these powers. We should be seeing three phases: an emergency, when central government is, naturally, in control; a recovery, when central and local government cooperate; and a rebuild, when local government is in control. But we are seeing central government retaining the purple robe over the lot. There are too many rationales here. Are these extraordinary powers justified? So said Mussolini, so said Musharraf, and so says Bainimarama. They talk of the doctrine of necessity, and we recall what ultimately happens to all these regimes.

My final comment is this. The bill is a commentary on who we are. New Zealanders are, by and large, by nature not a theoretically minded people. We like to see ourselves as pragmatic and casual, decent and fair-minded. No. 8 wire takes precedence over encyclopaedic script. We tenaciously refuse to write a formal constitution, proud of our British heritage. We disbanded the Upper Chamber on the grounds it might get in the way. We are slow to write into the books our natural obligations pertaining to human rights and freedom of information. We glue our society together on personalised trust rather than idealised obligation. These ingredients make for a fragile society, more fragile than we realise. The pure taste of these ingredients is in this legislation, which the New Zealand Parliament, claiming sufficient electoral strength to muster the numbers, is about to adopt in the name of we the people, whose characteristics we witnessed today. In this bill we have ridden roughshod over the statute book. We have pushed the bill through a unilateral Parliament. We have suspended certain basic rights, and we have rested its operationalisation on the blithe assurance of personal trust, the trust of one Minister backed by a group of Ministers. Is this the moment to acknowledge that in the forty-ninth Parliament, whose time is not yet at an end, we have witnessed the resignation of two Ministers on the grounds of violating political and personal trust? Every society, when it starts down the road to repression, claims that extraordinary events justify extraordinary law. That is the basis of martial law.

Let us not opt out of human society and claim that because we are pragmatic, casual, decent, and fair-minded we are different. We are not. We have witnessed emergency powers prevailing in countries we know well. It is not just Egypt and Syria. I know what it is to live in societies where freedoms are circumscribed or where situations are tense. I have lived in Jordan, a beautiful and wonderful nation, where to criticise the king would place one in serious trouble. I have entered Haiti 3 days after a dictator was ousted, and the sandbags with machine guns peered out at people. I have been to Burundi between genocides, where we appealed in the Parliament at Bujumbura for calm and mutual understanding. That experience, incidentally, carries a personal note that illustrates my point. On that occasion I took eight members of Parliament with me from around the world. Four were from the West, four were from Africa. Our lead parliamentarian was an outstanding Opposition leader from West Africa. He was renowned for his courage, his acumen, and, above all, for his compassion for the people. He later went on to become a popular president whom the people loved and trusted. Who was that man? He was Laurent Gbagbo.


Is Africa so very different from these far-flung shaky isles we call home? Are we so benighted as to say yes, so provincial as to believe ourselves to be superior? To those who might, let me refer them to Chile, Argentina, Mexico, and Uruguay, and respond to the obvious prejudice—and, of course, Italy and Germany. We generally relate to those countries and others in times of trouble. I ask colleagues not to think we are immune. It is not that I do not trust Gerry Brownlee; it is that I do not trust myself. I would feel reassured if we had a codified constitution and that our constitution foresaw such an event and required for it in a measured and prescient manner, rather than require, through our constitutional ineptitude, this kind of legislative nightmare. We could take the example of a close Commonwealth partner, India, from whom we could learn much about democratic principle. India has a constitutional arrangement for a state of emergency in its framework. It has declared emergencies three times in its history. That is not to comment on the precise states of emergency that India has declared—they are controversial, each one—but rather to focus on the fact that India has a constitutional framework for a state of emergency.

The Civil Defence Emergency Management Act, and the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill do not do it. If we have learnt anything from this episode, it is not about how courageously we are surviving the physical ordeal—we all knew we would. After all, we once were warriors, Celtic and Polynesian. If we have learnt anything it is what we do not know, or know less well, about ourselves—call it the political ordeal. If there is one lesson of today, it is that we need to enshrine this kind of reserve power in a constitution