SpeechHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker. Thank you. I'm pleased to take a call on the Natural Hazards Insurance Bill and can I formally acknowledge the former Minister responsible for the Earthquake Commission Dr David Clark and all of that mahi that he and officials and the Finance and Expenditure Committee have done on the bill and congratulate the new Minister Dr Deborah Russell.When we were doing the second reading of this bill we'd just had the Nelson storm event. An atmospheric river dumped more than a month's worth of rain in 24 hours on Nelson/Whakatū flooding the Maitai River leading to about 350 landslides which Toka Tū Ake – Earthquake Commission (EQC) will now be dealing with—really flooding disrupting lives disrupting communities. So I acknowledge the ongoing distress to people in the Nelson region and also of course the huge trauma to everyone in Tai Tokerau Tāmaki-makau-rau Tai Rāwhiti and Hawke's Bay who have been affected by the Auckland Anniversary storm and Cyclone Gabrielle and my sincere condolences go to the families and friends of those who have died. Just acknowledging too the huge community effort from volunteer firefighters to marae the police National Emergency Management Agency neighbours reaching out to neighbours—everyone trying to keep each other safe and moving on that recovery path. As Toka Tū Ake – EQC told select committee last week—and I quote—New Zealand's natural hazard risk profile is becoming more complex as the effects of climate change become apparent. As a country we will be exposed to more frequent and … severe weather events as a result. Managing the impacts of climate change and natural hazard risk can and should be complementary—mitigating the impacts of one can improve [the] outcomes for both." In 2021-22 with several severe weather events 76 percent of Toka Tū Ake – EQC's claims were for landslip storm and flood damage to land and that compared to 31 percent in the previous year. So in the last 12 months one of the insurance companies told the select committee last week of 12 extreme weather events causing direct financial costs of $440 million with of course much larger social economic and human costs. So this bill is an important part of how we keep people safe in a world with a broken climate where these fearful and traumatic events of the last few months are going to happen with increasing frequency. Toka Tū Ake – EQC is all about reducing the impact on people and property and communities when these natural disasters occur by ensuring that we've got insurance against the damage. It is an important bill because it replaces the 1993 Earthquake Commission Act and as others have noted it seeks to implement the lessons from the Canterbury earthquake series. One of those key lessons is to make the commission's functions and its role and the insurance cover it provides much clearer and to set some new objectives. One of those—and I hope that people in Hawke's Bay Nelson Tāmaki-makau-rau and Te Tai Tokerau benefit from this—is to ensure that the commission manages claims so that they're settled in a fair and timely way. There is much more direct involvement by insurance companies now being the agency that people go to in the first instance but the bill also introduces a clear statement of the repair standard for buildings and land cover and that was a problem in Christchurch. It establishes a standing dispute resolution scheme and requires the commission to participate in that so that homeowners don't need to go to the court in the first instance. It's also about sharing costs and—as Dr David Clark noted—the increase in the cap. One of the commission's other functions is to facilitate research and education on natural hazard issues including ways of reducing risk and building resilience before natural hazard events occur. The commission invests about $21 million annually in science and research to better understand natural hazards—or it's done that in recent years—and it's now moving into advocating on district plans to try and ensure that that natural hazard information is taken into account by councils when they decide where building activity and where residential zoning should occur. But like Stuart Smith I think more needs to happen in this area. This bill is not enough. We need national direction and quite urgent national direction under the Resource Management Act (RMA). Work was started some years ago on a national policy statement on natural hazards but that wasn't completed. We've got the Natural Built Environment Bill and the Spatial Planning Bill before select committee. Those aren't expected to come into effect for seven to 10 years—fully into effect. They've got better natural hazard provisions than the RMA but it will be some time before they come into play and as the Insurance Council has recently said we need to stop building in dumb places. It doesn't make sense for insurance payments whether they're from private insurers or through EQC to be used to rebuild homes on flood plains where people are at risk of being flooded again or in areas that we know are vulnerable landslips yet that is exactly what happened in Westport. We had insurers paying out more than $73 million in claims on houses contents and motor vehicle damage for people in Westport and another $24 million in the wider district. One company did propose that there be a managed retreat programme for the most vulnerable and exposed properties with claims payouts going to enabling rebuilding on stronger safer ground. That didn't happen so the insurance payouts funded rebuilding or repair of houses in largely the same place. So the work that Toka Tū Ake – EQC does in research and the payout regimes that happen post natural hazard events really need to ensure that there is this movement towards stronger ground and I acknowledge a recent working paper by the Environmental Defence Society on the principles and funding for managed retreat. The commission in I think future legislation in the Parliament with things like the climate adaptation bill really needs to take some of the proposals that are in this working paper into serious consideration. We benefit from EQC because the costs are shared. We also need a sharing of costs where we have a managed retreat situation and I'm sure in areas of Hawke's Bay there will be areas of those flood plains where people shouldn't be rebuilding because of their vulnerability. We need to share the costs of allowing people to move. That was enormously successful in the Christchurch earthquakes allowing some 6500 homeowners to move and get on with their lives even from the residential red zone. So we need Treasury and we need agencies to be looking at other financial mechanisms to allow people who are living in areas that are very vulnerable to natural hazards to actually go through a community discussion process with councils with iwi and with others and to work on how we do this thing called managed retreat what are the financial incentives is it grafting things on to the Earthquake Commission Act and is it establishing a separate fund like the New Zealand Superannuation Fund which is funded from a variety of sources. But that's the benefit of EQC because the levy on people's insurance policies contributes to helping people recover from the event. Similarly we need a fund that can help people move away and to move to stronger safer ground. So this bill does make a very good start. It makes some major changes to EQC. It provides meaningful change in terms of the scope the certainty and the processes around EQC's cover the ability for people to access and navigate the claims process post a natural hazard event and disaster. It strengthens and modernises the commission but we do need to go further in dealing with this issue of managed retreat so that people are not in harm's way and we need to ensure that the research that the commission does really informs a good planning process. Kia ora."