McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Well I often think that in life there are lawyers and there are others there are environmentalist and there are others and luckily every time I think of it I'm in the others". Sorry Madam Assistant Speaker I want to take a brief call on the—well it might not be so brief actually—the Earthquake Commission Amendment Bill. But before I do I really want to wish everyone—because it will be my last opportunity to speak in the House this year—a very merry Christmas some a merrier Christmas than others but I'll reserve the right to tell them in due course who they are.Simeon Brown: What do I get Ian?IAN McKELVIE: Ha ha! I'm not sure about you Simeon.We're not here to argue about what's in this bill because we support what's in this bill. I think it is a timely I guess review of the activities of the Earthquake Commission (EQC). Frankly if we didn't have an Earthquake Commission in New Zealand we may well not have insurance for earthquakes particularly in some parts of New Zealand; so it's a critical part of what we do in New Zealand. In fact I suppose when we think about it it's probably been a critical part of what we do in New Zealand since 1931 at least. It certainly is now and the events of recent years—particularly with Christchurch and Kaikōura and the events in Wellington—have pointed to the huge requirement for this commission to operate and to operate in an efficient manner.The changes that have been proposed in this bill particularly increasing the cap and as the last member spoke about at length the ability of people when required to make claims up to two years after the event is I think a very positive change. It also removes the EQC insurance cover for contents which is certainly a necessary change to the bill—well I don't know whether it's necessary or not but it's easy enough. You'll always be able to get insurance within reason for contents cover in the private sector and that's how it should be. So this commission really shores up an issue in New Zealand which is hugely important for us and that is the fact that earthquakes do a lot of damage to our ability to attract insurance. If we think about Australia in Australia fires are really their earthquakes and the same thing happens there. In fact in many parts of Australia you can't get cover for fire insurance; so an EQC-type arrangement shores that up.I want to talk about a couple of things—one the Minister responsible for the Earthquake Commission mentioned actually and that was the measure that Stuart Smith introduced around insurance companies handling effectively the first contact claims and in fact handling the whole of the claims process. The Minister mentioned the fact that that can be tacked on to any natural disaster. And I accept that; it can be. But we then heard Duncan Webb go on to say that we can't force insurers to accept those types of arrangements. Well we certainly can if it's a law because the law is the law. So if we put it into law there would be no problem ensuring that the insurers accept those requirements. And so I didn't think there was necessarily a sensible argument to that. In fact if we put it in law we could enforce that and we could ensure that that happens.But I think that initially the changes that have been made to this legislation and to the Earthquake Commission's activities are sensible. I do think though that there's a significantly large amount of work required to further changes to this legislation in the future because as we review what happened particularly in the two Christchurch earthquakes and probably Kaikōura and Wellington I think we'll come up with a different solution in due course to the challenge we've got. I think it does need to be connected to the private insurers because at the end of the day they make the market in New Zealand. They're hugely important to where we get to and I think that we need to accommodate them in the way we write this legislation. I don't think for a minute that it's the Government's business to be providing any kind of business activity where that is adequately covered by the private sector.Now you could argue that in some cases and certainly in the earthquake situation it may not be adequately covered by the private sector in which case I think there's very good reason for Government to intervene. So as I said earlier we support all the changes that are made in the course of this. There are some improvements that could be made in the future and as the reviews come to hand I hope that the Minister will go on and make those changes.I just also want to very briefly mention the background to this legislation in that three Ministers at least had an impact on this: Gerry Brownlee who dealt with the initial Christchurch earthquakes; certainly Nicky Wagner has had an input; and the current Minister Megan Woods. I think that when you're dealing with this kind of thing or with this type of legislation that is specific in a lot of cases to the personal effect it has on people that's pretty significant. So Parliament across the board needs to make changes that enable people to live better lives in times of natural disaster and that's really what this is about.I think I've mentioned in the House previously that I've had experience myself of EQC claims going right back to 1931—they weren't EQC claims in those days but I certainly have buildings that were damaged in 1931 and have been re-damaged since. So it's quite interesting and I understand the challenges that those people would have. It didn't perhaps affect me in the same manner because it's not recent damage but I think it's hugely important. I commend the bill to the House and I'm sure that there will be some reviews coming to us in the future that will change it again. Thank you."