White HelenHELEN WHITE (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to speak in support of this bill and I will be part of the select committee that gets to hear the submitters. I recognise that that will probably be a very interesting but quite emotional experience because we're no doubt going to hear from some of the people who were really hurt by the previous iteration of this legislation—the culture that surrounded it—those people particularly of Christchurch who suffered in the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011. I have a great respect for Silvia Cartwright; she is one of the most interesting people I've had to meet because she's a very independent person and she has great structure in her thinking and she brought us an inquiry and a report with a lot of detail in it and a lot of lessons to be learnt. And while those lessons have begun to be learnt and have been adopted this bill will actually clarify and crystallise a lot of them in the law. So I welcome it coming.I wanted to comment on a few things I've heard from the other speakers just to clarify them. I went through the legislation that we have and it is quite right that there is a concern about the cap being $300000 but actually that's subject to a review so according to the draft that would be looked at every five years as would the levies. My friend in the Green Party has talked about the process that would be adopted in that area and I can see quite a lot of resonance in what I've read so far that goes to the methods that are used in accident compensation. So that happens both in that area and it looks like the proposal is that we adopt quite similar ways of handling claims and there's a lot to be learnt in those areas because what we're dealing with here is actually a piece of legislation that's a key part of our safety net in this country. It really is going to provide an underpinning security to not only people but also business in our country because we all rely on being able to actually know where we stand in terms of this very important asset in people's lives which is their home.I also wanted to comment on another issue that was raised about whether in fact it was progressive enough in a time of climate change in terms of movement of people from hazardous areas. I noticed also a provision which was about relocation of homes and allowed for equivalent relocation—either on the land itself or on another piece of land. That seems to me a very sensible part of the legislation so there's obviously a looking forward to a time when there are going to be much greater challenges than we have had. After all we do live in a country that is—I noted when I was looking through the material—the second-most dangerous country in the world apparently in terms of natural hazards; so add to that climate change and this is one we have to get right. I fully intend to work hard alongside my colleagues in terms of listening to submissions and listening to the lessons learnt and making sure that we do get that right.I think another important part of the bill with regard to that is that it does focus on three subsidiary purposes and the third of those is actually education research and information. So it's a bill that's looking towards the future in that way and it's very much trying to build the resilience of our culture in these situations. The other subsidiary purposes of this legislation that are being introduced in this piece of legislation are claims management and fund management. With regards to claims management I think that's worth a pause because I think that's a lot of where the heartbreak came in the Christchurch earthquakes. We have to get that right. We have to have a system where people can actually engage in a process that doesn't go on and on and doesn't try and actually break their spirit in order to break the cost of a repair.This is a piece of legislation that I can see has so much to offer in terms of clarity of people knowing where they stand but also a process where they might be able to resolve their dispute where they know where they stand and where there's a code of conduct that's not all about driving people down and is actually accessible to people—hopefully without lawyers. I belong to that lovely profession and actually a lot of money was made by lawyers in the Christchurch earthquakes at the expense of a lot of people's agony. So that is an area where I'd like to see a lot less involvement of lawyers and a lot more proactive good faith resolution of claims at the earliest possible stage and I can see that this bill has that potential. With that I will finish and will say I'm looking forward to the learnings that will come out of this for me personally and I commend this bill to the House.