Mitchell ClaytonCLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): Thank you Mr Chair. I appreciate the call—[Interruption] Thank you Mr Lees-Galloway you will get your turn in a moment. A very warm welcome to you all this evening. It is great to see the Minister in the chair Mark Mitchell—I will throw a few questions your way a little bit later on; I would like to hear some of your responses. The bill we have got here is the Fire and Emergency New Zealand Bill. I will be specifically talking to clauses 3 and 4—the Purpose"—and then following with the "Transitional savings and related provisions".I think the opening statement really needs to be made with regards to this being the 17th review in 21 years and yet despite that very comprehensive—so-called comprehensive—review that has taken place just last week we have had the Minister come out and say: "Well maybe we should have actually included civil defence in this review and we should include it and you know what while we're at it why don't we shoot from the hip and let's also include St John Ambulance." Of course it is all a little bit too late and if after 21 years this is the best we can do then I think we need to scrap it and start again because this really is quite a shemozzle when we look at it and we break it down.With regard to the review my question to the Minister is: was much done in relation to looking at other international studies that have been affected with amalgamation and the problems that they are having with the amalgamation? Of course when you are looking at the size of the operation of the Fire Service throughout rural provincial areas including all of our volunteers and the fact that 83 percent of our operation is made up of volunteers what sort of impact is that going to have specifically on our rural and our volunteer sector? All of the information that we have got from the Ferguson report and the Malone report the review of causes and contributing factors of forest fires in Europe reports and what is going on in California suggests that this is going to cause major problems within the organisation and its structure. So that is one point that needs to be looked at with the transition and of course the burden of cost.But when we look at the review and the contributions that have been put forward the idea that we are going to be taking a levy on insurance to cover the cost of running our Fire Service really does not quite cut it. We really think that the Government needs to look at a better funding model than what has been proposed; specifically around the fact that 7c out of every $100 spent on commercial properties is uncapped and over 40 percent of the entire funding of Fire and Emergency New Zealand will come from that commercial sector which is completely out of whack with all other sectors that are going to be contributing through their insurances.We have got a member's bill that is going to be addressing a very very small part of it in relation to insurance that is going to be affected by this levy. An example of that is if you get travel insurance a very very small component of your travel insurance looks after your luggage and your belongings and of course that is captured under the insurance levy aspect—except for the fact that we have the very very improbable possibility of there being an issue with a person who has got travel insurance who is going to require the assistance of the Fire Service yet they are expecting to be paid for that. So there are a number of things that need to be factored into this.We believe that the funding model and the levy should be scrapped and that we should be funding the Fire Service out of the general tax pool because of course the other part of this bill is somehow turning the Fire Service into a collection agency. It is required to have a department set up specifically to go and collect money from those people who refuse to pay. The simple fact is that in a commercial reality if you have got people who refuse to pay their levy and it is left to the Fire Service to go and collect that money then the reality is that if they do not pay it what is the Fire Service left to do? I mean it is an integral part of our emergency service providing systems and now all of a sudden it is going to be spending time effort energy and money in setting up procedures—something that the Inland Revenue Department is specifically designed to look after—to go out there and gather revenue for themselves. The last thing we want to see is the Fire Service making decisions because someone has not paid their Fire Service levy and therefore it says: "Well we're not going to go and attend that fire because they haven't actually paid their subs."To finish—I will be taking a few calls tonight—if 40 percent of your funding is actually received through your commercial property levy then surely that funding is going to be more concentrated into the cities to ensure that they get the funding as opposed to the rural fire services which will be marginalised."