Tuiono TeanauTEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. This is my first time rising in the House in 2023 and it's been quite the year so far. I also want to place on record my aroha for our whānau up on the Tai Rāwhiti Gizzy—right up the coast—Te Matau-a-Māui Heretaunga right across the Hawke's Bay there and Napier just the impact on their communities the impact on our whānau. For me seeing those images of people stranded on their roofs Recognised Seasonal Employer workers stranded on their roofs helpless will be etched in my memory. The floods were so immense that they touched on my community where I live in the rural Manawatū. When I was heading home after we adjourned last week the road was closed because of floods. Across the river from where I live bridges were taken out and one of our marae got flooded out as well but I just knew that the impacts for our whānau right up there across Te Matau-a-Māui and Tai Rāwhiti were just immense. So e mihi ana ki a koutou katoa te Tai Rāwhiti otirā Te Matau-a-Māui i tēnei wā. [So I acknowledge you all on the East Coast and in Hawke's Bay.] I want to acknowledge their community resilience. I want to acknowledge the spirit of mutual aid that when people are toughing it out our communities pull together. Whānau pull together we pull together neighbours connect and I also want to acknowledge our first responders the incredible work that they do—the incredible work that they do. When we find ourselves in urgent and emergency situations our first responders are the people that are there to help us out. And I want to acknowledge our firefighters in particular the connection right across the firefighter community. I recall last year when I went out on the strikes—all of our Green MPs went out to tautoko the firefighters and just to learn about the mahi that they were doing and the connections between professional firefighters and our volunteer firefighter force and how they worked together how they were a community driven to do all those things that keep us safe but also to acknowledge that the gear that they were working with was substandard. Some of it was so old and falling to pieces—the struggles with pay and conditions and all of those issues that were traversed last year as well. These are the people that are actually at the forefront of helping us across the Tai Rāwhiti and Te Matau-a-Māui. I also want to extend my aroha to the whānaus of Craig Stevens and his colleague Dave van Zwanenberg up there in Muriwai as well. E mihi ana ki a koutou katoa.From the time that the first reading happened to the time that the departmental report was written till now we have had significant weather events. Things have changed. Things have changed dramatically. We supported this bill to select committee but we had concerns about whether the impact for potential overall funding for Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) as a result of this bill—and I get that there are different situations which means we need to be specific about fire as opposed to material damage. But in the context of our times we're talking about scale here as well. These are not just small isolated floods that you can then claim insurance on. These are national emergency events. These are massive events. And I think it's important that the Government actually take a pause on this and actually really think about whether this fits in with the overall framework with the weather events that we know are coming down the track. I find myself agreeing with some of the statements that were made by the previous speaker around tinkering with the levy system. Given that we know what the firefighters were telling us last year and the situation that we have with the massive weather events that we have here now we do support that call for an independent review of FENZ as well building on the stuff from the Belinda Clark report of course but then actually taking a step back to actually really take a look at it because we have to ask ourselves whether the tinkering is actually going to be able to do it particularly if we have more of these events coming down the track.And I do acknowledge and I agree with the work of the select committee when they did this work—and the goal of the legislation which is to reduce the administrative burden: that's fine that's something that's good. If you're going to do something do it efficiently right? If you're going to do something make sure that you do it properly and in a way that actually reduces burden of cost. That's fine; we agree with that.But holding multiple material damage insurances on property could possibly result in multiple levies—I get that—and the cost of redesign insurance assistance to avoid this is estimated at $50 million which would be likely passed on to policy holders via higher premiums—I get that as well but we're looking at the scale of cost what's happening up there on the coast and the tens of billions and billions of dollars. And so we have to look at that actual cost in the wider context of the larger cost. Although most properties insured against flood damage are also insured against fire it could be argued that this could mitigate this somewhat but as I was saying earlier that scale is nothing that we've ever seen before.And I also want to highlight some of the concerns that FENZ themselves brought up as well in a nutshell. FENZ noted that the levy payable on contracts of insurance for fire removes the opportunity to broaden the base of levy payers and does not reflect the principles of universal" and "equitable" that are described in the Fire and Emergency New Zealand Act. In their submission they also say that the Fire and Emergency preference is to have the levy payable on contracts of material damage for the following reasons—and I'll just read those out—"Fire and Emergency has a broader mandate than the former fire service with a mandate to provide response services for many non-fire events … maritime incidents rescues transport accidents severe weather-related events natural hazard events and disasters … material damage aligns closer with the principles of universal and equitable where costs are shared across a broader group of policyholders who have the potential to benefit from the wider emergency response services that they provide." So for me I agree with the criticisms that were made of FENZ in terms of the way that funding could and should have been allocated. But we also have to think about it in the context of the work that they have to do right now; but also the potential work that they have to do in the future. So the Greens will not be supporting this at this stage and we would ask that the Government I think take a pause. There is some time between a second reading and third reading to actually think about what this means in the wider context of the floods and future climate-related or -impacted events and then that should give us a clearer picture of how we should be approaching this. Thank you Madam Speaker."