Hudson BrettBRETT HUDSON (National): I rise in support of the Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Levy) Amendment Bill as it has been reported back from the select committee—Hon Ruth Dyson: Which select committee? BRETT HUDSON: —which is the best select committee in Parliament Ms Dyson—the Governance and Administration Committee. It's the hardest-working with the best results but you know I want to be bit modest at least. To echo the comments others have made about the services that our Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) people provide the length of New Zealand it's just outstanding not only in the recent Nelson-Tasman fires of course and the horrific incident in Christchurch on 15 March but actually every day. Every day of the year we have FENZ personnel whether they are paid or volunteers responding to structural fires rural fires and other incidents such as accidents on the road and many other first responses. They perform an enormous service for New Zealanders. They deserve to be recognised for that and they deserve to be properly funded for that. That's why we had no problem supporting this amendment bill as it was introduced and worked on through the select committee. It would have been great if the industry and officials had been able to settle on the new levy rates in time for the original go-live date if you will of 1 July 2019. But cognisant that they were unable to do that we were happy to support an idea that would allow a two-year extension for them to work through the intricacies because it is a matter of intricacies and nuances and scenario modelling to understand how a setting in one area may have some flow-on impacts in areas. We were seeking to make the funding through insurance as equitable as it can be through that model. I'd like to acknowledge and thank officials for their work on this bill in select committee. They listened to submissions. They listened to committee members who quite forcefully—quite forcefully—articulated some of the views. We re-articulated some of the views that submitters had made and they came back with a revised lead-in time for rate changes. They also came back—our drafters. The Parliamentary Counsel Office don't get a lot of mention in this House but they came back with an exceptionally good way of drafting the exemption for whare taonga and museums—what they call the cultural heritage bodies. It was so much better because the easy way to do it would have been to just list a series of institutions and businesses and museums as being exempted which would have required Parliament to make changes anytime there was an addition or deletion to that list. Instead they put the effort in to come up with I think a very pragmatic and a very good definition that allows the intent and for change over time to be realised in a way that wouldn't require Parliament to be passing further amendment bills. But I just want to finish by touching on the paper that was tabled at the end of our consideration which was from the Minister noting an attempt to extend and delay further the new levy's—whatever that levy might be—go-live date so that she could review the funding models from a first-principles basis because that was already done. It was done by the Government and the officials before the original bill was introduced. We took the opportunity to ask officials what had changed and there was no principle-based change to require another look at this. In fact they hadn't changed their views on how the funding should be done at all. They entered this amendment bill's select committee stage believing that a levy-based model was the best model and right up to the point until the Minister issued this letter to the select committee they still believed that that was the best and most appropriate funding model. Instead New Zealand insurance payers and also the insurance industry are going to be left with up to two further years of delay while the Government gazes at its navel a bit and tries to redo the work that's already been done—trying to somehow create gold out of a base metal—when the work of the trade-off of understanding what the equities and inequities of each option might be the distortions that one option might introduce over another and why the Government and officials in the previous term settled on the levy-based model as being the best of the options that were available. So we're almost certainly going to arrive back at the same point but meanwhile levy payers will have up to an additional two years of paying what appears to be—according to the annual review that was recently tabled in this House—an overcharge because through the fire levy the accounts for FENZ have grown a great deal quicker than anticipated and expenses haven't risen in line with those. So the very simple deduction is that people are paying too much today on their levies and—here you go—this could actually go on not just for one or two more years but for up to four years. I think that's an absolute travesty for hard-working Kiwis who are looking to make ends meet while they fly in the face of rising grocery bills a higher cost of living through higher petrol taxes and of course also potential capital gains taxes and any other tax the Government might be thinking of imposing. So actually this is not a trivial matter. It's not a trivial matter to simply say We'll take an extra two or three years to have another look at potential funding models." I'll leave just one salutary message for the insurance industry who I believe had something to do with bringing about this relook at the funding model and that is to be careful what you wish for because you might not get what you like. I draw their attention to the New Zealand First speeches on the first FENZ bill where they all said that they felt that the levy model was wrong and that instead it should be funded through compulsory third-party insurance. I can tell members this and I tell New Zealand this: the insurance industry—the Insurance Council and their members—are not going to support the idea of compulsory insurance where they are legally forced to provide insurance to people who don't meet any risk profile that they would normally accept. So I leave them with this message. They may appear on the face of it to have got a wee pause that they would have liked but they'd better be a bit careful about what they end up with. None the less we will support the bill as it has emerged from select committee. We reserve our position on the bill in the committee of the whole House stage."