3Purpose

1. The purpose of this Act is to support the social, economic, cultural, and environmental well-being and safety of the public by providing for the following matters:

2. promoting and improving the sustainable management of hazards:
3. protecting property:
4. encouraging and enabling communities to achieve acceptable levels of risk, including by the following means:
   1. identifying, assessing, and managing risks:
   2. consulting and communicating about risks:
   3. identifying and implementing cost-effective risk reduction:
   4. monitoring and reviewing those processes:
5. planning and preparing for emergencies and for response and recovery in the event of an emergency:
6. requiring local authorities to co-ordinate, through Emergency Management Committees, planning, programmes, and activities related to emergency management across the stages of reduction, readiness, response, and recovery, and encouraging co-operation and joint action within those Committees:
7. providing for the integration of national and local emergency management planning and activity through the alignment of local planning with a national emergency management strategy and national emergency management plan:
8. encouraging the co-ordination of emergency management, planning, and related activities among the wide range of agencies and organisations preventing or managing emergencies under this Act and the relevant legislation listed in Schedule 2.