Williams Arena; Tuiono TeanauARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you for the opportunity Mr Speaker. We're not quite sure whether to break out into bipartisan kumbaya on this one because it is a bill that both major parties support but interested followers of House procedure will be very interested in the process that this bill was introduced in. The Insurance Contracts Bill in the name of the Hon Dr Webb was drawn from the members' tin and then very soon after the Government progressed the Contracts of Insurance Bill which is essentially the same bill with the consumer protections removed and then introduced it into this House. It is an interesting one for anyone who's interested in Standing Orders and procedure because that would not have been allowed if it was a member's bill. But of course the Government is able to introduce this bill before the Hon Dr Duncan Webb's bill is read for the first time and that has not happened yet. So saved by the bell we get to have a cross-partisan conversation about this.Can I acknowledge the Hon Kris Faafoi who began this work—as the member Stuart Smith has acknowledged—and also the Hon David Clark and the Hon Duncan Webb beside me who have not only consulted with the industry but have also considered the consumers at the heart of this protection because let's talk about who this is for.This is for those people who are affected by the cost of living. Of the average household that has gone up by 6.2 percent in the year to March. And a big driver of those rising costs and one of the things which is measured in that basket of goods which contributes to that rising cost is insurance which are up by 17.9 percent. So when we look at this bill and what it's for it is about making sure that consumers who need insurance can get it and they can get it at an affordable price and that their living costs aren't affected by undue delay and unfair costs of repair for their properties. That's really important when we consider what this reform is all about. And I acknowledge those Ministers who have been up for the challenge of tackling what is a very complicated area of law especially in the context of more and more extreme weather events higher costs for insurance and the risk of insurance flight from New Zealand where that is occurring—because those costs hurt everyone especially people on fixed incomes.And I want to talk about the pensioners who I door-knocked in Inverell Avenue. That's in Wiri in the Manurewa electorate and also in the Tāmaki Makaurau electorate. A couple there told me that their home and contents insurance had gone up—it was supplied by AA—by 50 percent in the last year and so they had made the decision not to continue with the payments of their insurance. And for a couple like that who are on a fixed income you can understand that the difference between $200 and $300 means that they cannot go on paying that cost. So you know what is the flow-on effect of that? It means that in an event like the Papatoetoe cyclone which very randomly affected households—one household in the street would have lost its roof and all of the contents were completely destroyed whilst their neighbours were completely fine— they wouldn't be able to replace any of the furniture that was inside the house not the kids' clothes not the toys not the beds. They would be completely out on the street because they didn't have insurance and they weren't able to pay those premiums. And so that's why this reform is really important and that kōrero that the Inverell Court pensioner shared with me is borne out in the statistics that show that the costs are up 19 percent in the year-on-year increases for insurance for contents across the board.This is something we should all be concerned about. And so it's in that context that I asked the Minister: why has he removed the consumer protections in the Government bill of the last term that were developed to make sure that people like those pensioners in Manurewa could continue to not only afford their insurance but that they would get cover when they needed it and there wouldn't be unreasonable delay. And I urge the select committee—not the ordinary select committee that would consider this the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee but the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I urge them to give this a good going-over about why those consumer protections that were in the Insurance Contracts Bill. Perhaps they could look specifically at clause 60 Duty of utmost good faith" and the difference between that and Minister Bayly's bill which severely limits the duty of good faith for insurers and they could consider why he has removed those protections for consumers who this reform is for because if the Government was concerned about addressing the cost of living for ordinary New Zealanders they would have kept those provisions.I also want to talk about what else the Government could be doing to progress this reform because people with their insurance contracts cannot compare the cost of their product with other products from their supplier and they cannot compare the costs with other suppliers because there are no consumer data-rights provisions in this bill—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The member's time has expired."