Patterson MarkMARK PATTERSON (NZ First): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. It's again a pleasure to get up and speak on behalf of New Zealand First in support of the Earthquake Commission Amendment Bill and a thoroughly sensible piece of legislation and amendment it is. Of course we're amending the Earthquake Commission Act of 1993 but the genesis of this Act goes back to the old Earthquake and War Damage Act of 1944. Every time I consider this piece of legislation I think of those far-sighted legislators back in the 1940s who put in these provisions to protect our economy from major shocks—excuse the pun with the quakes—and to futureproof our insurance systems. It was just those far-sighted provisions that saw us have $6.1 billion in the bank when the Christchurch earthquake struck—the first of them—on 4 September 2010. But of course as we heard from Minister Parker before we've just recently had to trigger the Government guarantee. I think we were down to about $240 million - odd in the kitty after a series of quakes—obviously the Christchurch ones but then more latterly the Kaikōura sequence.I think the bill has been relatively well traversed. It's quite a simple bill. This is in fact the low-hanging fruit. Of course there is a wider review under way and there will be a more root and branch overhaul of this Act but this is the low-hanging fruit. There are just these four sensible changes. Of course the raising of the cap to $150000 up from $100000—that cap was set in 1994 and property prices obviously have gone up considerably since then. But there is as the previous speaker Mr Stuart Smith alluded to some moral hazard in this. We require people to be insuring themselves so we don't want to set the threshold too high where individuals consider that they do not have to take responsibility for their own actions. So I think that we've got that—the Finance and Expenditure Committee have come back reinforcing that $150000 limit.The removal of the cover for contents is once again thoroughly sensible. The complexity of that—trawling through people's vases and televisions and microwaves—just clutters the whole process and also probably does open itself up for a little bit of fraud too. Of course being a Cantabrian I know that Cantabrians wouldn't have indulged in that sort of behaviour but it may be possible to occur in other places. I think removing that $20000 cap for contents is a sensible measure. Of course there has been quite a lot of deflation with household items too over the ensuing years. The claims notification period from three months to two years—I think that again just takes some of the pressure off getting the claims in and I do note there is provision under exceptional circumstances to extend that again beyond the two years so that is again pretty sound thinking I think.The information-sharing provisions: now there were 470000 claims in the Christchurch sequence and 38000 in the Kaikōura sequence. So the volume of claims and anything we can do to simplify that process and the sharing of information—I did actually note in my first reading speech that I thought that was the area that the select committee would have to look at hardest. I note that the Privacy Commissioner made some reasonably significant recommendations to the select committee that have been picked up on in part. There are provisions like that public health has to be under threat or public safety. It does allow property-related information to become publicly available but it does also have some safeguards to protect individual privacy. So once again I think the Privacy Commissioner will have been a very useful contributor to that select committee process and no doubt his views carried some weight.I note the implementation of the bill from 1 July 2019 and I think that can't come too soon. The run of misfortune we've had with these significant natural disasters means that the low-hanging fruit that these amendments represent needs to come in sooner rather than later. So I think that's also a thoroughly sensible course of action. So without further ado I will commend this bill at the second reading stage to the House on behalf of New Zealand First. Thank you.