Gisborne council takes first look at new emergency management bill

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Gisborne district councillors have received a report on the Government’s Emergency Management Bill but will have until November 3 to make submissions to a parliamentary select committee.

The Bill is described as a government attempt to ensure the emergency management system is geared towards inclusive, community-led responses to emergency events, as well as continuing work with iwi and Māori in emergency management.

Council special projects manager Yvette Kinsella told the full council meeting that there was likely to be plenty of time before submissions would need to be made as the Government was not dependent on acting before the election.

That was confirmed when the Bill received its first reading in Parliament later on the same day as the council meeting.

The Emergency Management Bill will replace the Civil Defence Emergency Act 2002 which provides powers for managing emergencies at local, regional, and national levels.

The bill aims to:

■ clarify the roles and responsibility across the emergency management sector.

■ recognise and enhance the role of Māori in emergency management.

■ provide outcomes for communities that are disproportionately affected by emergencies.

■ enhance the resilience and accountability of critical infrastructure.

■ modernise the legislative and regulatory framework.

While national security officials last year said “wholesale changes” to regulations were needed, Emergency Management Minister Kieran McAnulty said it was not a “fundamental transformation” when he introduced the bill.

The legislation’s focus was not on critical infrastructure resilience, but on emergency management, he told RNZ.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) have registered deep concerns about the whole two-wave approach and wanted to abandon parts of the bill, so as to launch one single big wave of reform instead, newly released papers show.

“Any increased infrastructure resilience will have cost of living implications for consumers,” it said last August.

“There are also significant risks that the critical infrastructure proposals in the paper may not lead to all the outcomes the National Emergency Management Agency is seeking, and some of the proposals could instead lead to compliance costs without any corresponding benefits to New Zealanders.”

Its three key concerns covered not knowing where funding was coming from, the two-part approach risking regulatory “confusion” and fatigue and forcing more reporting-back demands on to companies.

The bill says companies must report back annually to the government on their plans to deliver services after a disaster.

While this was “unlikely to provide meaningful information”, companies did this anyway, MBIE said.

The electricity, telecommunications, and ports companies also opposed this, saying it was more red tape and costs, the papers showed.

The council will receive a staff report including recommendations on a parliamentary submission at the next meeting in August.