Curran ClareCLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): First before I begin can I start by offering my deepest sympathy to the family workmates and former SAS colleagues of Steve Askin who died after crashing into Christchurch's Port Hills while fighting the fires in Canterbury. Secondly can I offer my thoughts and the thoughts of the House and this Parliament towards the serious situation that has quickly worsened today. There is now a civil defence emergency in effect in Canterbury due to those fires. Thirdly can I note that tomorrow there are cross-party talks occurring on civil defence and New Zealand's response to serious civil defence events and the absolutely critical nature of good communication occurring.I also note that the Minister of Civil Defence Gerry Brownlee said today that there was no hurry. Clearly there is a hurry that good communication should occur. He has just been quoted tonight as saying that it is one huge frustration" that there was not a civil defence emergency declared earlier and around the communication of the agencies involved in fighting this fire. What that tells me and should tell this House is that we have some issues that we have to deal with and address urgently in this country around good communication and around breaking down the silos.Can I commend the Minister of Internal Affairs—Labour is supporting this bill and I am going to get on to it in a minute—for the steps forward that have been taken with this legislation but we have to break down the silos at the local level and we have to break down the silos at the national level. Our communities all around New Zealand depend on this. They are depending on us to show good leadership here and to ensure that when there is a serious emergency—and yes we seem to be having a lot of them lately—we are able to work with agility and with professionalism and not do patch protection. People's lives are at stake people's houses are at stake and people's communities are badly affected and so we have got to get it right. We have to step up our game on these things.Labour is supporting this piece of legislation. It creates a single unified—or integrated as the Minister Peter Dunne described it—fire services organisation for New Zealand to be called Fire and Emergency New Zealand or FENZ and repeals the Fire Service Act 1975 and the Forest and Rural Fires Act 1977. It is seriously ironic and quite disturbing that as we are speaking on this legislation tonight we have a serious fire emergency and that we have rural and urban fire services working side by side. No doubt there will be others coming in from other parts of the country.These changes are well overdue. We welcomed the opportunity to examine them. I did not sit on the Government Administration Committee. I did not hear all of the submissions. I was fortunate to be present for one of the sessions of submissions and so have been paying some attention to this. We support this bill. We acknowledge the more than 110 individuals and organisations that made submissions and I also need to acknowledge my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson who is the chair of the Government Administration Committee and has taken the lead on this bill. As a Christchurch MP as the MP for the Port Hills I think everybody knows where she is tonight and why she is there. She has gone back to her community to support her community and our thoughts are with her tonight and with any other MPs who have headed back to Christchurch.The bill does a number of things but one of the things that the bill introduces is a new insurance levy payment system to fund the new Fire and Emergency New Zealand—FENZ I think we are going to start calling it. Labour does acknowledge the concerns raised by the significant stakeholders about the levy system. I particularly want to speak about museums and the concerns that were raised by museums around the country. I want to reference the museum from my home town the Otago Museum which appeared before the committee and gave a very strong submission. I know that it was echoed by other museums. The concerns that museums have raised are very valid and do raise some serious concerns for us because the levy cost under this bill based on a fully insured collection could increase their costs—our museums our repositories of our cultural heritage—substantially and would seem disproportionate to some policyholders' need to call on the FENZ services.It was suggested during the submission process that the levy could be waived or capped in the case of public gallery or museum collections but could apply to their buildings or other property. We would like to see consideration given to this approach in the regulations proposed to be developed under this legislation. I do want to emphasise this to the Minister because this was an issue of significant concern. I just want to make reference to the submission made by Museums Aotearoa where it said that "An increased levy is likely to impose significant financial hardship on museums and galleries which would need to be passed on to their communities of support."I would also note that most museums in this country manage themselves financially. They do not get a lot of Government support and they are very passionate about what they do and as a country we should be very passionate about what they hold on our behalf. So we should be listening when they speak because they do not speak publicly very often. Otago Museum said this "provides an incentive to declare a low value and could lead to under-insurance." That is really significant and something that should be taken seriously. "It will also make the option of no insurance or self-insurance more tempting especially in the case of volunteer organisations." They asked for an exemption to waive the levy and they were joined by others.So I want to reiterate those concerns and say that this is something that should be considered. In essence though Labour supports this bill. We think that it is sensible that it was a logical thing to do and we commend it to the House."