Yang JianDr JIAN YANG (National): I rise to speak on the Canterbury Earthquakes Insurance Tribunal Bill. The purpose of the bill is and I quote to provide fair speedy flexible and cost-effective services" to help resolve claims between policy makers insurers and the Earthquake Commission. Well in principle National supports the effort to have alternative measures to resolve outstanding claims and also we believe that we need to get rid of the backlog of claims. That intention is of course perfectly acceptable but the problem is that we have always had these concerns or reservations about whether this bill will be able to achieve what it intends to achieve. So I'm very disappointed that the other side voted down some Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) proposed by our colleague Stuart Smith. Now he proposed a few SOPs and most of those SOPs are very good but they were not able to be passed in this House because the other side did not accept them. So let's go through some points of these SOPs. First of all SOP 226—right? This SOP acknowledged the need for a fair and speedy resolution of claims while maintaining procedural fairness. Well this SOP would have removed any doubt that this tribunal will restrict the ability of parties to call or cross-examine expert evidence. So this SOP would achieve that because at this moment we are still doubtful that that expert evidence would be called by all parties and would be cross-examined. The bill is trying to resolve some backlogs some very complicated and technical claims because these claims—2233 outstanding claims—are very complicated. Most of them are very complicated and technical. It is therefore important for us to have expert evidence. At the same time you also need to test that expert evidence because we need to make sure the evidence itself is really well founded. We need to be able to cross-examine the expert evidence. That is why it is important for us to make sure these parties can call and also cross-examine expert evidence.Then there's another one—another SOP. That's SOP 229 which amends clause 55 to ensure that all members who are appointed hold a law degree with a minimum seven years of practising experience or are another suitably qualified professional with arbitration experience. Now at this moment there is a risk that members may lack experience and objectivity because at the moment there are no requirements that the members must have something like a law degree or experience in practice in law and also there is no requirement in there to make sure these members would be able to be impartial. So that's why it is important for us to make sure these members do have that kind of—either a degree or certificate or qualification or experience. So this SOP would again make sure that the tribunal would be very credible but again it was not accepted by the other side. Another issue is who can bring claims to the tribunal. At the moment only policy makers can bring claims to the tribunal but in some cases it is not really insurers who cause delays. It could be policy makers who cause delays because policy makers may want to get the best deal out of this particular dispute. It is important to have what we call natural justice to make sure the insurers also can bring claims to the tribunal so this is another point we would like to emphasise. But again it was not accepted. It is important to note that we should give insurers some confidence in the market because they contributed billions of dollars in settling the claims in Christchurch and the credibility of these insurers basically is often underwritten by underwriters overseas. So it is important to make sure these insurers and also underwriters have confidence in the market and also have confidence in our justice system. Now the final point is whether we should allow respondents to pursue claims with third parties after the settlement of claims. Basically at the moment once the policyholder's claim is settled with the insurer then the case is deemed to be finished and therefore for an insurer to bring any claim against a third party the insurer would have to go through the High Court to start the process again. Again we would say that that is not really a fair or a speedier or a more flexible or a cost-effective way so that is why we believe this bill may not be able to achieve what it attempts to achieve. To summarise this bill has some problems and it could have been improved. But unfortunately the SOPs from this side were not accepted and therefore we do not believe this bill will be able to achieve what it intends to achieve. Thanks."