Wagner NickyHon NICKY WAGNER (National): Thank you very much Madam Deputy Speaker. I'm really pleased to speak in the second reading of the Earthquake Commission Amendment Bill. I'm pleased because the legislation does need to be amended. Having fit for purpose legislation in a country like New Zealand which is so earthquake-prone is actually essential.The work that underpins these amendments began back in 2012 to 2015 under the previous Government. At that stage it was a response to the Canterbury earthquakes. There was developed a discussion document to update the 1993 legislation to update it in light of our experience which was considerable. That discussion document was a significant piece of work. It covered nine quite broad areas and unfortunately this bill only covers four of them. So the most complex the most difficult and the most challenging areas haven't been dealt with.The legislation does need to be updated urgently. It needs to be modernised and it needs to be streamlined because it is absolutely essential that the Earthquake Commission (EQC) can respond as effectively as possible to support New Zealanders in case of an earthquake but also under other natural disaster conditions. So this bill covers the most obvious the most straightforward and the simplest issues—in other words the low-hanging fruit. That's useful but unfortunately it doesn't do the job properly.I like anybody else who's lived through a significant earthquake sequence was reminded for the need for this legislation last week when we had our little shake in the House. The Earthquake Commission is a unique organisation. It's a really Kiwi organisation begun in response to the Napier earthquakes and it's served New Zealand well over the years. I'm very aware that it needs to continue to provide that service and do it better if possible. So I think we're duty-bound to as quickly and as effectively as possible incorporate all the learnings from the Canterbury earthquakes. It's interesting because in Canterbury over the past few years we've learnt to love to hate EQC and I say that it's because—it is only because—of the Earthquake Commission that New Zealanders are so highly insured.Pretty close to 100 percent of New Zealanders are insured and that's generally because the banks won't give you a mortgage unless you've got insurance but that is out of step with the rest of the countries around the Pacific Rim. When you look at places like Japan or the United States of America it can be that their households—only about 15 percent of them are insured and so I'm very grateful to the Earthquake Commission particularly when we had significantly large meetings straight after the earthquakes where people were very agitated about what was going to happen to their homes and because virtually everybody was insured the questions were things like When is my house going to be fixed? How can it be fixed? How can it be repaired?" In contrast in other countries where perhaps 85 percent of the people aren't insured it would have been a totally different conversation.So getting back to the bill the four amendments that are there are a step forward but they don't go far enough. The first which is removing the EQC insurance cover for contents is an absolute no-brainer. In times of a major disaster the Earthquake Commission needs to be absolutely focused on the big picture—in other words looking after people and their homes and getting them fixed or repaired or rebuilt. The insurance industry's perfectly capable of covering contents and personal effects and I think this amendment will help streamline services and improve the effectiveness of EQC so it's the right thing to do. Raising the limit of the EQC residential building cover cap is also a sensible thing to do. Presently it's $100000 plus GST but that was set way back in 1993. So to increase it to $150000 plus GST is appropriate and the right thing to do.One of the problems that we had during the Canterbury earthquakes was getting sufficient and accurate information about damage to settle claims as quickly and as effectively as possible and so the amendments to this bill allow for more transparency in terms of sharing information to facilitate settlements and to inform disaster preparedness response and recovery. Basically it will enable a much more proactive release of information for the public good. The fourth issue which is extending the time of claims from 30 days to three months and then under regulation to two years—and even longer under exceptional circumstances—at first glance seems to be a pretty good thing to do for EQC customers but there are significant issues around this that really haven't been dealt with in this bill. One of the most difficult and challenging areas in the Canterbury experience was about reinstatement of cover after a seismic event. We had over 15000 earthquakes so some people had significant damage at several or more seismic events and to get the accurate apportionment of damage costs in each event was a huge and difficult problem.The apportionment of damage is absolutely fundamental to EQC and private insurance costs and any extensions of the time frames for claims will have an impact on these responses and the dollars that are involved. So this is a significant area that needs to be looked in further amendments to the bill.So as I've said National is pleased to support this amendment bill. It will improve the Act but there is still an awful lot more work to do and the most difficult issues need to be wrestled with because they haven't been included here. So yes we support the bill but more work needs to be done. Thank you."