Edmonds BarbaraNATURAL HAZARDS INSURANCE BILLSecond ReadingDebate resumed from 9 November.BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise as the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee to report back our report on the Natural Hazards Insurance Bill. Obviously the purpose of this bill as has been canvassed before in previous speeches earlier in the House today is to modernise the Earthquake Commission scheme so that future New Zealanders do not have to go through the same traumatic experiences as the people of Canterbury. There are a lot of lessons learnt from the Canterbury earthquakes and as a result of a public inquiry Dame Sylvia Cartwright came out with a number of recommendations to change what was the Earthquake Commission to strengthen it so that we didn't have to go through the same things that the Cantabrians did at what was already a traumatic time. We received 26 submissions in relation to this bill from both interested groups and individuals and we heard oral advice from 12 submitters at hearings both in Christchurch Wellington and via video conference. I'd also like to acknowledge you Mr Speaker because I understand it is probably one of the last bills that you had before you were promoted. And although the committee really wanted to go to a landslip at the time because of scheduling changes we had to be able to take some submissions through video conferencing. I'd like to also at this time acknowledge our officials who worked on this bill Treasury the commission itself a special mention to our independent specialist adviser Peter Woods and the Office of the Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel Office. Their advice and the changes that they made to the bill made the drafting much simpler for us as simple people to be able to understand. And therefore it was quite easy to recommend and to accept the changes. The bill is reported back with a unanimous decision. There's only one particular clause that didn't have a unanimous decision and that's in relation to clause 2; that was the commencement date. We heard a number of submissions from insurance companies and insurance groups saying that the application date in the bill as introduced was too short. So therefore the committee on hearing the submission decided that we would extend it out for an additional year—the application date. I will leave it to the other side of the House to discuss as to why they didn't support that. I also want to talk briefly to one of the claims handling changes that the select committee suggested. The bill proposes that the commission participate in an approved disputes resolution scheme and act consistently with the code of insured persons' rights—the code. This is in relation to once a person has come through with a claim; it is quite difficult. You've already had a major loss and then if for any particular reason you have a dispute whether it be between your own insurer or with the Natural Hazards Commission we wanted to make sure that these particular disputes were handled as quickly as possible because it is traumatic enough to have received some form of property loss. So the changes from the Finance and Expenditure Committee included requiring the commission to settle claims as soon as practicable rather than within one year of determining the amount to be paid. We also added a new provision regarding the commission's recovery of amounts paid in error including protections for affected claimants. And another particular change made was removing the commission's ability to impose a one-off charge to enable cover to continue after a claim is settled. The committee also made changes to the information-gathering sections of the bill. We also included particular procedural safeguards for provisions relating to the powers of entry and information gathering and one for me for our Inland Revenue people and also as a previous tax lawyer we made sure that several changes throughout the bill were to specify which figures in the bill are inclusive or exclusive of GST. I know how much the tax lawyers get concerned when that's not very clear in the Act. So therefore my short contribution today was to say thank you very much to the select committee itself. The cooperation across the board in relation to this bill was really a reflection of how important we all saw that making sure that this particular bill was good for when those traumatic losses happen—that we don't make it any more difficult. We're making it futureproof and we're making it much easier for claimants of losses during the most traumatic time of a natural hazard. And so I commend this bill to the House.