Hudson BrettBRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I rise in support of the Canterbury Earthquakes Insurance Tribunal Bill and I support comments made by my colleague Stuart Smith just a little while ago. Firstly I'd actually like to acknowledge not only the work of the Governance and Administration Committee members in deconstructing and reconstructing this bill but particularly the work of officials. We supported this bill in first reading but our spokesperson in this area Mr Stuart Smith had a number of reservations and number of points that he wanted to raise with officials. The reason I would particularly acknowledge them is they clearly demonstrated that they were prepared to listen to submitters and prepared to listen to the arguments from members around the table and particularly from Mr Smith. We've seen a number of amendments recommended and incorporated through our report including one that Mr Smith mentioned which was a source of major concern for us which was the ability for the tribunal to award general damages which could have permitted for instance compensation for mental distress. As Mr Smith has articulated that would be bringing in elements of the law of tort into contract law and that's just not the way things are done in New Zealand at least. There is an amendment recommended by officials and accepted by the committee that the tribunal can only award such damages as would be normally awarded by a court under general New Zealand law. So that addresses that particular issue which if not necessarily the greatest concern we had was certainly a serious concern that we had with the bill. As we worked through it though we noticed too in the regulatory impact statement we were mindful—and we do support this. But we are mindful that while the tribunal will be instituted with the intention of speeding claims—and actually before I move further on this I would make the point that the recommendation from officials to amend the definition for in-scope earthquakes to move that from 31 July 2011 to 31 December will in itself bring into the scope of the tribunal potentially up to I think around 47000 additional claims. So that is a good idea. It also gives the tribunal some power to look at quake damage beyond that point if at least part of the damage had occurred in those eligible Christchurch earthquakes which again supports the idea of the tribunal being there as an intent to help speed the process of claims a number of which of course—as you would well know Madam Assistant Speaker—have been around for a very long time. So that is all well and good. But as the officials themselves noted in the regulatory impact statement in terms of both available lawyers and also particularly experts many of those individuals are already involved in court actions over quake claims and repairs and perhaps remediation claims as well. There are two elements there. One is potentially that there could be trouble managing a conflict of interest or a potential perceived conflict of interest if an expert or lawyer who has already been involved in a certain court action was to then potentially be involved in a tribunal case. But more fundamental than even those potential conflicts is simply the volume of people and the demands on their time. The officials themselves raised the very real risk that they saw that rather than speeding the process of claims the tribunal in the sense that it could at least create a larger funnel to accepting them could actually end up slowing the process and causing these claims to potentially take longer than they might do and that's simply through the availability of sufficient numbers of experts to be able to work through those tribunal hearings in a timely fashion. So we do bear that in mind but on balance—well not even on balance actually—we supported this bill into select committee. As I've said I acknowledge the work officials have done to support the committee to make recommendations. Mr Stuart Smith has a number of areas that he would like to strengthen further. He has signalled to the House today that he intends to issue a number of amendments in the committee of the whole House and we will certainly support the bill getting through to that stage. So I'll take this opportunity to commend the bill to the House.