Wagner NickyHon NICKY WAGNER (National): Thank you very much Madam Chair. I'd just like to take a short call to talk about the purpose of the bill in Part 1. National supported this bill through the first and second readings and of course through select committee because we did believe that a tribunal could provide an alternative mechanism to manage outstanding earthquake claims. I think everybody would like to see a speedier more flexible and cost-effective service to solve claims but all the way through this process we have had serious reservations and concerns about whether the tribunal will actually do that. As you're seeing today we are presenting a series of Supplementary Order Papers that we think improve the bill and would make it possible for us to vote for it in the committee stage and the third reading. We're particularly concerned about the bill in that it can only deal with simple cases—cases that are not already in court—because we know that the vast majority of the 2233 outstanding claims that have been identified are complex and technical and of course that makes sense because they are still outstanding after seven or eight years. So we do feel that the progress of this tribunal will be limited. We're also really concerned that the Ministry of Justice felt that a mediation process very like National's—the Residential Advisory Service which was particularly successful in this area of solving difficult claims or solving claims full stop—would have been very useful and we would have liked to have seen that in preference to a tribunal. The thing that really disturbed us was that in the regulatory impact statement they were very doubtful about the tribunal and how effective it would be. The problem with that was it felt that the tribunal might make claims take longer than they already would for the process rather than the status quo and I don't think that would be getting anyone anywhere. That would be a tragedy. I'd just like to talk about two Supplementary Order Papers that are in the first part of this bill. The first is Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 230. This goes back to clause 5 and the definition of a claimant". In the bill now the definition of a "claimant" is "a policyholder or an insured person (or both)" and what we want to do is insert "or an insurer" because there are circumstances where an insurer may like to use this process to solve some of the claims. We feel that a balance to have that insurer to have that opportunity would make a difference. On top of that in clause 10 we also want to include that the insurer may bring a claim to the tribunal. In clause 12 again we want to insert after "policyholder or an insured person (or both)" "or an insurer"—furthermore also in clause 16 and later in other parts of the bill. Basically this is all about providing for insurers to bring a claim just as a policyholder or insured person could do that. We believe it's important that the procedure under the tribunal is equally available to both insured and insurers. To be able to examine a contract between two parties when only one party has access to the tribunal process is we believe a miscarriage of justice. Both parties should be able to access the process equally. The other SOP that I'd like to look at is SOP 227. This is an amendment concerning the bringing of a claim to the tribunal with additional parties. In this amendment we'd like to simplify the process if an insurer or the Earthquake Commission wishes to continue claims against a third party through the tribunal. Now this is a logical extension of what should happen. If we are using a tribunal and there is a third party that needs to be involved in this case it should be able to be continued through the tribunal rather than have to go back to the slow costly process of going through the High Court. So we are concerned about this bill. We have supported it to this stage simply because we think something could provide a mechanism to manage earthquake claims but we have reservations and the SOPs address some of those reservations. Thank you Madam Chair."