Wagner Nicky; Rurawhe AdrianHon NICKY WAGNER (National): Thank you very much Mr Assistant Speaker. I too would like to note that today 4 September is the eighth anniversary of the Canterbury earthquakes and the first major earthquake of a 15000 - earthquake sequence and I remember that morning extremely well.Everyone who lives in Canterbury and in Christchurch has been affected by these earthquakes. Everyone has been touched; everyone has felt the loss. But I do have to say that I think we can all be very proud of how Cantabrians have responded over this length of time over the last eight years. There have been enormous challenges of course and one of the most major challenges has been insurance issues. When you think about it there were over 600000 individual claims with about 200000 properties affected and over the last eight years of those 200000 properties all have been completed with 3600 left still on the Earthquake Commission's (EQC's) books. Of course we always knew that there was going to be an enormous amount of work and an enormous amount of heartbreak I suppose that went through these insurance policies and we always knew that some people would be the last. The last people are the ones that are often the most vulnerable the ones who've had the toughest times and so it is really good that we are looking today at this Canterbury Earthquakes Insurance Tribunal Bill because if we can use this to clean up those last 3600 claims that are still with EQC that is a very good thing.So National will be supporting this bill. We'll be supporting it because we think it's important to try everything we possibly can to complete the insurance settlements in Christchurch not because we have any faith in the bill. In fact we have no faith in it in terms of its shape in terms of its substance or in terms of its practicality. Like all Christchurch and Canterbury MPs I've been deeply involved with insurance claims over the last eight years and we've supported thousands of people to go through the EQC process. So we've learnt a little bit about insurance and we're very hopeful that we can finish those last claims but what we have found over that length of time is that things like the Residential Advisory Service have provided support for some of these very complex and difficult claims very successfully.Now just looking at the principle of this bill. The principle of the Canterbury Earthquakes Insurance Tribunal Bill is to provide speedy flexible and cost-effective services to help resolve insurance claims between policyholders and insurers … and insured persons and the Earthquake Commission". As I said National supports this purpose but we feel that this piece of legislation is flawed. It has been rushed as has been noted today and there's been very little consultation either with the industry or with the insured people. It's really supposed to be to help homeowners so it was particularly important that homeowners were part of the process and that hasn't been the case. It sort of feels that rational policy development with good information has been sacrificed for the rhetoric of the election promises and that's a real worry.It's a real worry that even the regulatory impact statement identified as well because what it said was the lack of consultation has compounded the lack of data—both of which you could've got if you'd talked to the people involved—which means that Cabinet faces significant unknowns. Now that's particularly concerning because really what we want right now is a little bit of certainty.So as I said National supports the idea of "speedy" we support the idea of "flexible" and we support the idea of a cost-effective process but let's test whether this legislation actually delivers on that. First let's look at "speedy": well again the regulatory impact statement says it "may take just as long or longer to be resolved [by] the new tribunal than under the status quo." On top of that we've heard that the tribunal won't be up and running till at least later next year. So taking longer than the status quo not starting till later than next year—would we consider that speedy?Secondly "flexible": the tribunal only has the power to decide simple cases—simple cases that are not already in the courts. So it rules out a large number of EQC claims already in the system. The final 3600 claims that are on the books are largely not only complex but very complex and technical because that's why they're outstanding—they're the ones they haven't been able to solve. So this tribunal needs to be flexible enough to deal with those issues and it's obviously not. Equally so as has been mentioned today it doesn't deal with onsold properties onsold claims and that's an issue that's becoming increasingly pressing. This Government has done absolutely nothing to deal with them.Finally decisions by the tribunal can be appealed back to the court. Now that's neither speedy nor flexible and in fact Mr Little's own department the Ministry of Justice preferred a mediation process to this tribunal something along the lines of the Residential Advisory Service. Now that's the service that National set up nearly six years ago which has been running very successfully. It's morphed and it's tweaked to deal with the issues that've come up. It's dealt with thousands of cases very complex cases—cases that have got very vulnerable people. I actually say they have been very flexible about how they've dealt with those cases how they've dealt with EQC and how they've dealt with the insurers. So it seems to me that something like the Residential Advisory Service on steroids would actually deal very effectively with these last 3600 claims.Finally let's test the idea of cost-effectiveness. Because the bill has been so rushed there's actually no information about any cost-benefit analysis at all. We don't know whether it's going to be cost-effective. We're only going to find out when we get a hefty bill and right now there's only one year's worth of funding allocated in the Budget so where will the rest of the money come from? So cost-effective? I doubt it and again because of the rush we not only have been unable to understand the data but also can't understand how that data can be used to get effective outcomes.So in summary: the new earthquake insurance tribunal will it be speedy? I don't think so. Will it be flexible? No it can't be. And will it be cost-effective? Well we won't know until we get the bill. As I said in the beginning National absolutely supports this bill because doing something is better than doing nothing but I really believe that the strengthening of the Residential Advisory Service would've been a much more speedy much more flexible and much more cost-effective approach. We've seen it being successful—thousands of claims have gone through that service—and I believe it's far better to build on a success build on something that's working and something that can give the flexibility to finally close off these very last insurance claims. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): This is a split call—five minutes. I call Jo Luxton."