Law experts slam NZ quake bill

The beautiful brick building at 90 Riccarton Road is demolished after structural cracks in the buildings concrete after the 7.1 Earthquake that rocked Christchurch. Photo / Greg Bowker

Law experts in New Zealand, Britain and the United States have written a letter condemning the Government's earthquake response legislation.

The 27 legal scholars called for a rethink of the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Act.

The emergency bill was passed unanimously in Parliament earlier this month, going through all its stages in one day as MPs acknowledged the need to be able to quickly clear away red tape and get on with the job of rebuilding homes, business premises and infrastructure damaged by the 7.1 magnitude earthquake.

The bill passed unanimously but the Greens voiced serious concerns about the extent of its provisions.

Scholars from six New Zealand universities, from the universities of Oxford and Essex in Britain and a professor from the New York University School of Law released a letter today addressed to the New Zealand people and parliament.

The legal experts said they understood the need to rebuild quickly but abandoning constitutional values was not the way to go.

"(The bill) represents an extraordinary broad transfer of lawmaking power away from Parliament and to the executive branch, with minimal constraints on how that power may be used."

Key concerns were that:

* Through orders in council (legally enforceable decrees), individual government ministers could change almost every law "effectively handing to the executive branch Parliament's power to make law";

* courts could not examine the process or reasons a minister had for thinking an order in council was needed; and

* orders in council have full legislative force and people acting under the authority of such orders were protected from legal liability, with no right to compensation should their actions cause harm to another person.

"These matters are not simply `academic' or `theoretical' in nature. Over and over again history demonstrates that unconstrained power is subject to misuse, and that even well-intentioned measures can result in unintended consequences if there are not clear, formal measures of oversight applied to them," the experts said.

When the law was passed, Cabinet minister Gerry Brownlee said the rebuild was going to take a long time and require the whole country to lend a hand.

"Business as usual won't work - we need to be able to adapt, we need to be able to remove bureaucracy."

The bill also sets up the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission, whose members include the mayors of the three affected districts, three government appointees and an independent chairman.

After Green Party intervention it was agreed the commission would not be exempt from the Official Information Act.

It will advise ministers on the orders they need to make and will be a contact point between central and local government.

Recommendations made by ministers cannot be challenged, reviewed, quashed or called into question by any court.

- NZPA