Russell DeborahHon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour): This is a much-needed bill and it does sound as though we're in furious agreement around the House on the need for the bill and the need for insurance law reform even if there might be some disagreements about some of the detail and whether the bill goes far enough in some regards.I commend both the former Minister and the current Minister for working on this issue and ensuring that we finally do get this legislation into the House. I know it has been a long time coming and many people have worked on it for a long time. I have to say that I am delighted to find that instead of going to the economic development committee where I had thought it might have gone it is nevertheless coming to the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I think that's quite important. We do need to have a better understanding of insurance in this country. One of our tasks in the Finance and Expenditure Committee is understanding the financial stability of the country the way that banks are regulated and it does seem in some ways that although we look at the supervision of banks quite carefully no committee and no ministry really grapples with insurance law and grapples with some of the issues around insurance. So this is going to in some ways be part of the upskilling of the Finance and Expenditure Committee to help us to really grapple with many of the complicated aspects of insurance law.There are some issues that are worrying me slightly and I think we'll need to have a very careful look at them in the select committee. I want to draw the attention of committee members and the House to clause 70 of this bill. It's talking about the implied term of the payment of claims. The basic idea is that insurers are supposed to be paying claims in a reasonable time—they can't unnecessarily delay claims and so on. So you know it's implied—of course you pay the claims in a reasonable amount of time but then we need to have a little bit of a think about what actually constitutes a reasonable time. In some ways it's how long is a piece of string—we don't quite know what a reasonable time is and if we look in clause 70 it does talk about some of the factors that can be taken into account—the type of the insurance the size and complexity of the claim the compliance with the legislation factors outside the insurer's control. If I think about my own rohe up in West Auckland in terms of getting some properties repaired it depends on the road outside it being repaired first and that's outside the insurer's control so that would be an interesting thing to look at. There is also reasonable grounds for disputing the claim and so on.I guess something that worries me here is that I want to understand what the incentive is on the insurer to get things settled in a reasonable time. It might have been helpful had we considered something that I know my colleague Dr Webb was considering and that is that insurers might perhaps be required to pay interest if they have delayed the settlement of the claim unnecessarily or they haven't met it at a reasonable time.Hon Andrew Bayly: They will if someone dies.Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: Well that's a good start but I don't see why it should just be if someone dies; there could also be other reasons to pay it reasonably quickly. So I'm going to be looking at some of those issues in the select committee.Nevertheless I'm glad to see this coming to the House. I think when we do the law we need to make sure that we consider in all cases whether something is more friendly to the insurance company or more friendly to the premium holder to the customer. In general when we look at those sorts of issues we look at the relative strength of the parties and typically we might consider that perhaps if we're looking at a particular clause in this—who does it favour who does it give a little bit more strength to or who does it give a little more succour to perhaps—we might construe stuff in favour of the policy holder. That'll be an issue that we need to have a look at and it'll be a rule of thumb—it could go one way or the other. Perhaps we might go in favour of the weaker party but let's see how we go. I'm looking forward to this discussion and I commend this bill to the House.