Dyson RuthHon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Can I commend the member who has just resumed his seat Paul Foster-Bell. He is the deputy chair of the committee that I have the privilege to chair the Government Administration Committee and he does a very fine job. He really genuinely assisted in getting cross-party collaboration on trying to make what we thought was already a good bill even better than it was and I think our committee achieved that. I want to acknowledge also that the Committee of the whole House did good work on this bill.This is a long overdue piece of legislation and I was delighted having witnessed several other attempts to achieve amalgamation of the various parts of our Fire Service to have the opportunity to chair the committee that looked at it. We had over 100 submissions on the bill many of which were from people who had a lot of experience in the firefighting business either as professionals or as volunteers. I think they made one of the most valuable contributions that I have heard. So I want to acknowledge them.The levy system which the Minister of Internal Affairs acknowledged was one of the most contentious issues and I will mention it later on—I do not think we have got it right. I would not be as dismissive of the people who are concerned about it as the Minister was but I certainly hope that their fears are not realised. I certainly hope that they are wrong in the description of the concerns they have because they think they are genuine. They raised them with the committee and we were unable to progress that.Paul Foster-Bell mentioned museums and we had good assurance from the officials that the concerns they raised would not be realised. It was one of the frustrations that the committee had in that a lot of the detail is going to be in regulations but we made our views very clear. We have got on the record the assurances we received at various points of the deliberations so that we can say: No no you told us this and now you're going to deliver it." So I will just remind the people who are responsible for that that we have got it on the record and we will be keeping a close eye on it. But I do have confidence that they will deliver in the way that they said.The Committee of the whole House accepted the recommendations from our committee and made what I think were good amendments. The local committees are now called local advisory committees and we thought that was pretty appropriate because that is going to be their job. They are going to be advising. We excluded the insurance of aircraft that fly scheduled international services. We included some additional anti-avoidance provisions. We got a lot of help from the insurance industry. Despite the fact that it has a fundamental opposition to the levy regime it still gave us a lot of assistance in working through some of the insurance details which is not the expertise of any of the members of the committee. I just want to put on the record that we appreciate that and the consideration of the use of fires as a land management tool which was something that I guess for a lot of the city slickers who were advising the committee was not a familiar use. But again we came to a really sensible decision based on the contributions that we had from submitters.This is a really big and significant change and it is coming into effect on 1 July. I just want to say that I am frustrated that it has been delayed so long. We made the offer. We worked hard at the committee we got the bill back before it was due we made the offer to work in our overtime hours to perhaps get this bill progressed but I think—probably I would not say it was the obstinacy; I would probably say it was the incompetence of the former Leader of the House as to why that offer was not taken up. So it is now May and this bill is coming into effect on 1 July. I can give the Minister the assurance that it was despite our efforts which is not the usual case in Opposition actually that this bill has been delayed.I want to say that we as a Parliament have made a big and difficult job more difficult because of the time pressures that we have now put on the people implementing it. That was not the intention of our committee it was not the intention of Labour and if you want more details on who to blame I am happy to provide them at a suitable opportunity.Labour wants this bill to be delivered. We support it and we want it to be delivered well. We want our firefighters to go into the new regime knowing their place. We want them to know their chain of command and also to know that they are valued and valuable. They need to feel this is their organisation wherever they come from in their current life whatever part of the Fire Service they come from. We want New Zealand citizens to continue to hold our firefighters on the pedestal of respect that they currently do.It is quite funny when you look at the regular surveys of what professions are highly regarded. It struck me a number of times how ironic it was that we as politicians who are usually on the other end of the scale were determining the structure for the profession that is held in the highest regard but I hope we got it right.It is a grand and fortuitous situation hopefully that we are passing this bill on International Firefighters' Day and I guess that is a real tribute for Parliament to give firefighters. So I certainly hope it will go through by 6 o'clock. Minister Dunne you do not have to get anxious about that because we cannot extend it past the time we have got.I want to finish with some acknowledgments. I want to acknowledge firefighters throughout the country particularly those who have worked tirelessly recently in my electorate on the Port Hills fires. I want to especially acknowledge Steve Askin who died fighting those fires but also all the firefighters who worked so hard to keep people and property safe often I guess in more dangerous circumstances than we have seen in New Zealand before—very similar to what has been seen in Australia but pretty horrific for us. I certainly do not want to have a repeat of that anywhere in the country.I want to acknowledge the Minister. It is about the 16th or 17th time an attempt has been made. He got the stars lined up he got the right people on the job and it has worked—so I congratulate him on doing that. I want to acknowledge all of the select committee members who worked so hard to get this right the submitters who contributed so well to our thinking our select committee staff and particularly our officials. I think by the end of the process they were actually enjoying coming to our select committee—it may just be that they were extremely good at putting on a brave face. But under a lot of time pressure and a lot of pretty hard scrutiny from the select committee members they did the Public Service proud. We had a very wide range of advisers and every single one of them did a top-quality job. I hope that their bosses are listening and that it is reflected in their next wage negotiations because they deserve it.This is a huge step but for me it is still a job not finished. That is not a criticism of the Minister; I think we can just go further after what has been a very big and important step forward. I think we can develop a fairer levy system and we should try to do that on a cross-party basis. We have only got 11 sitting weeks left Minister Dunne. You are pretty good at using your time well. I challenge you to get that discussion started across all parties here. Let us see who of us is left after 23 September and let us pick it up as a discussion that needs to be had.I do think that we need a more common-sense approach to traffic management. If we can trust firefighters to save our lives—and we do—I think we can trust them to test fire hydrants without needing a traffic management plan and I hope we can do that. We need an independent complaints process. Submitters raised that and I think that in the same way as the Police do we should look at that. And we should put "Service" into the name of the new organisation. I do not know why really it is not in there but we all know that what firefighters do whether they are in rural and forest or are professional or volunteers. They are there because of their commitment to service and even if the word is not there none of us will ever forget that. This is a good and positive step forward and I am delighted to see its progress this evening."