Mitchell ClaytonCLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I just wanted a chance to reply to the Minister's comments with regard to some of the questions that have been outlined today and really the lack of an assurance that we have just been given in terms of a reason for or even an answer to some of the questions that have been asked by Adrian Rurawhe and by New Zealand First.The fact that the Minister has just said that the levy for the Fire Service is collected on a universal basis as opposed to user-pays does not stack up because the funding is being collected as a user-pays service. The fact is that if you are getting insurance and that money that you are going to be paying as a levy as part of that insurance is going towards funding the operation then that is clearly supporting the user-pays service. To suggest that the insurance companies themselves will be collecting on behalf of the Fire Service—and yet in clause 75 it is being set up primarily to make sure that those people within the Fire Service are making sure that money is coming in. It means they are creating a new tranche a new branch within the Fire Service to collect those funds and make sure those funds are paid.There is no credible answer that the Minister has given us that gives New Zealand First any comfort moving forward with this bill. The fact that he talks about clause 104 which would somehow exempt our Supplementary Order Paper 265 (SOP) from being implemented does not stack up either. In fact there have been a number of media examples of this and I can probably pull something out—a rabbit out of a hat as it is sometimes referred to. Last week the New Zealand Herald stated: Anyone with insurance may end up paying more tax to help fund New Zealand's emergency services including people paying for travel insurance despite there being no direct benefit an insurance group has warned."This is from the Insurance Council of New Zealand and a number of other groups are seriously concerned about this. This SOP that we are putting forward specifically ensures that people who get bailee insurance public liability insurance and travel insurance will not somehow be captured by this. Whether clause 104 may or may not exempt them from paying that the fact is this ensures that they do not.We do not support this bill. I can say that strongly because I do not think the full consideration of international standards that we have looked at of reports that are talking about the problems of dealing with this situation—using a levy system to fund an emergency service provider does not work. We would hope that in the twelfth hour of this bill going through the House we would see other parties opposing this bill because it does not do what it sets out to do. There is more than enough evidence suggesting that.We hope that we get support for our SOP. I think it is a very small token of effort by the Opposition to say: "Well let's at least not make the levy payable by those bailees public liability insurance and travel insurance." It is very small in the scheme of things. But the reality is that what this funding model is going to create is an imbalance of funding coming from a certain sector the levy-paying sector. I am specifically talking about the uncapped commercial levies. You have got caps on all the other sectors—residential and all your contents insurance and your cars—but no cap on your commercial levies. They are going to be fitting the bill for this and it is going to be a user-pays system that will be transferred on to those people leasing those premises. It is completely inequitable.In thinking about driving this the answer the Minister has given that he was steered strongly by Cabinet to suggest it wants to keep it as a levy-based system—we are not suggesting in any one moment that this should be levied on to a new taxation. But why is the Government not standing up and putting it into the general taxation fund as opposed to this nonsense which is a levy-based system? Thank you."