Smith DamienDAMIEN SMITH (ACT): Thank you very much to my colleague on the left Hon Eugenie Sage for that overview. The bill does replace the Earthquake Commission Act and does change the name of the commission. But I'd like just to spend a moment thinking about the people of Christchurch who 11 years on still have not got their claims resolved. Engineers are fighting over Should that wall be retained or should it not be retained?" One of the things that I think is a sense of duty in terms of natural hazards is that the Minister should really look before this law is introduced to clean up the legacy and history of this organisation so that we can start afresh and address whilst taking on board those learnings the misery that the people have gone through and are still going through. So this is not something that's just a brand new fix; we need to deal with what are existing legacy issues and we need to deal with them fast.The Finance and Expenditure Committee did recommend this unanimously except for clause 2 which was by majority which I think can definitely be resolved. I'd like to thank the chair Barbara Edmonds for an excellent process and to commend the committee for a very collegial approach to this.There are however several elements that are still sort of sticking in my throat which I thought I'd bring up at this stage because maybe there's something that we can do about it. It's interesting given the time frames recently when we passed the conduct of financial institutions regulations in which the Government insisted on chairs introducing plain language and strong consumer-based conduct programmes to deliver fair outcomes—I just don't think this bill is doing that.I've got sort of four points. I believe that the presentation of cover needs to be clearer. One of the big sticking points is just the legalese around insurance policies and them not being straightforward and not being roped on to the right fiscal entity. It's been dotted randomly throughout the bill but not quite nailed in terms of what that means in terms of traditional language that's used for insurance. Maybe in the draft we've just got to have a think about that.So we think adopting a more insurance policy - style approach which covers extensions exclusions and conditions would be a significant improvement and would go a long way to helping people understand the sort of cover that they've got. Most of these policies in New Zealand do not have a broker which is an important consideration so it's between the insurance companies and the claimant.In terms of recognition of agents working on behalf of insurance I think that's a very interesting point. But there's been a reluctance on behalf of the institution here to really recognise that policyholders usually get their families who are members who they trust to ring up and try and help them because it's so overwhelming—such a physical reaction to the circumstance. This needs to be a time when they're incredibly comforted and that has not always necessarily happened with the Earthquake Commission recently. So a simple way to recognise how a person is acting on behalf of the policyholder I think needs to be recognised whether they're contacted by phone—and as we know when you've got an earthquake situation even a phone call is a challenge to get through and an email is certainly impossible.In terms of the eligibility of mixed-use buildings—looked at again last night. I think this is still too complicated with the few areas where it's really hard to get what the bill specifies—i.e. the floor area of dwellings the floor area of any structure. We believe that simplifying this is crucial and suggest adding the total number of residents and units by the number of units in the multi-unit building.Two final points. On early calculations this needs to be really straightforward as the industry is not cleared to collect these on behalf of the Government. Currently one rule applies throughout New Zealand—as Ms Sage pointed out. The perceived exposures to natural disaster is based on community-based pricing. This is a drawback for lower-risk areas. A balance must in our view be struck to ensure a high level of insurance continues given our dependence on that. What we don't want is a situation where people are disincentivised to under-insure and that would be a general disaster.The final thing: just new responsibilities imposed on intermediaries. I think recording books and keeping data for seven years is more in line with the spirit of what we want to do. And on those points the ACT Party will be supporting the bill but we would like consideration of some of those finer details to still be in the thought process of the Minister and his advisory team. Thank you."