Bayly Andrew; Dean JacquiANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you. It's a pleasure to talking on the first reading of the Natural Hazards Insurance Bill. It feels like the Punch and Judy show this morning Dr David Clark and myself—Chris Penk: Dumb and Dumber.ANDREW BAYLY: —I'm just not quite sure which one's Punch and which one's Judy. But not Dumb and Dumber Mr Penk as I heard you mention there.But anyway this is a good bill and of course National will be supporting this bill. And I don't think we need to remind ourselves of the context for this bill—obviously it's come out of the traumatic earthquakes. But National kicked off the review of the Earthquake Commission as it was then called and asked Dame Silvia Cartwright former Governor-General to lead that review. She came up with 70 recommendations and this bill encapsulates a lot of those recommendations. Interestingly in the process—and I sit on the Finance and Expenditure Committee—we did look at the new definitions of these traumatic events and we redefined earthquake". "A sudden rapid breaking and shifting of rock beneath the earth's surface that results in ground shaking"—that was the original definition; we thought that was slightly unclear so we made the definition more generalised. We talked about floods—it was defined as "inundation of normally dry land by water due to storm storm surge [or] meteotsunami or the escape or release of water from its natural confines". So we just thought that needed to be tidied up a little bit so people could actually understand all that. And a storm event is a " 'violent disturbance' [in] the earth's atmosphere."So the first thing is we've made it slightly more user-friendly for people. But there's some very significant parts in this bill and I think the first one is we've widened the definition as to a structure. Previously it only referred to the primary structure—it might be a house. We extended the bill to include appurtenant structures. So people will be looking for their dictionaries maybe but what that means is other types of structures—not pizza ovens and dog kennels as the Minister quite rightly pointed out. But on residential properties often you will have a garage or something like that that may not be connected to the main structure which is important. So the liability was extended to those ones.It was also extended to horizontal infrastructure which is a Christchurch term: pipes drains and other services which is an important thing because often when you have earthquake events pipes get damaged as land subsides whatever. We thought it was important that the cover covers that and also retaining walls—particularly if you've got a retaining wall that's stopping a landslide from behind your house and it's consented and all that sort of stuff. We thought it was important that those types of structures would be covered. There is a limit on the value of that retaining wall or those type of structures—$50000 per dwelling on a retaining wall $25000 for bridges and culverts. So we widened the definition and we think that's very important.The second most significant aspect about this is the increase in the cover. Previously as most people will be aware earthquake damage was limited to $150000 per property. This has now been increased to $300000. And it's one of the issues where the committee—and I've been involved in finance and expenditure for a long time—had virtually unanimous support across the House about increasing that level of cover.The third element is this information requirement. So the commission now has increased powers of being able to gather information—obviously in the context of assessing claims—but also there's now a requirement that the commission needs to share information with the appropriate other Government organisations. In many cases we've seen a silo approach taken within Government and we need to look towards making sure our own Government agencies have access to the information and can get access to the information. The Privacy Act which is causing so much trouble for the operation or interoperability of Government departments and even with private citizens is an area that we were concerned that there was sharing of appropriate information so that all could be done to expedite claims and get on with things.The next aspect is the due date. National was particularly concerned about the proposed date of implementation in the bill. I do want to acknowledge the Labour members who agreed with us and pushed out the time frame by 18 months for the implementation of this bill to 1 July 2024. This is not to stop this from occurring; this is to be practical about when these things can be put in place. The committee decided on that and I acknowledge the committee members for doing that and the Minister for agreeing to that.The fourth issue is the requirement for the commission to participate in a dispute resolution scheme. It is an important aspect and one that we were very keen to see put in place and that is an important requirement on the commission.There are some issues with the bill that should be acknowledged—and I'm just conscious of the time because I don't want to drag this beyond 1 o'clock. But the first one is that the implication for increasing the cover to $300000 means that perversely in some low-risk seismic areas or in areas of generally low risk from these events people will end up paying a higher excess on the insurance premium—up to $200 per annum—and that is a cost that some people are going to bear. But the trade-off is a higher overall cover for people. The second one is removing the commission's discretion to discount levies to private insurers. Insurers do collect premiums on behalf of the commission. It is a moot point about removing some of the discounts and rebate that they're entitled to.We also introduced a new offence for insurers who fail to comply with the obligation to pay the levy to the commission. We would not want to see the new commission using that power inappropriately and conducting sort of audits of insurers. We've got to acknowledge that insurers played an instrumental role in helping particularly during the Christchurch earthquake. Those are the key bits. I think I'll draw it to a close because I know the House is about to lift but this is a good outcome. As I said National are supporting this bill and I look forward to further contributions as we move this bill forward through its progress. Thank you.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members the House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. today.The House adjourned at 1 p.m. (Thursday)"