Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): E Te Māngai o Te Whare tēnā koe. I don't always agree with Mr Simpson but I agree with every word he said then because similarly living in an area where the 11000 volunteers who are part of Fire and Emergency New Zealand are out attending to road crashes you hear the siren go off in the middle of the night and you think of the volunteers who are leaping out of bed to get down to the fire station to get the trucks out to go off to the equivalent of ambulance call-outs as well. They do an extraordinary job on behalf of all of us throughout New Zealand.This exercise which took place as a result of the Fire and Emergency New Zealand legislation in 2017 of merging the urban and rural fire services of merging fire and emergency was a massive one. I congratulate all of those involved in terms of developing into a single organisation and bringing all the back-office people together with the service personnel. They are often in very challenging situations that I personally wouldn't want to be in where people have been injured in road crashes and the like and I really express my appreciation for the huge work that they do.This bill is not changing the way Fire and Emergency New Zealand is funded but it is ensuring that the levy which has been carried over the transitional levy provisions have a longer lead-in time before the new levy is implemented. It changes what's called the back-stop date to 1 July 2020 so that the new levy system must be implemented by 1 July 2020 or if it is ready to go earlier. That can be done by Order in Council.I note that the principal Act the Fire and Emergency New Zealand Act 2017 provided for a levy regime which ensured that there was a stable source of funding for Fire and Emergency New Zealand that the levy system was universal so that costs were shared amongst all of those who benefit that it was equitable and commensurate with the benefits that it was predictable and that it was also sufficiently flexible to adapt to change. So of course ensuring that the new levy fits all of the criteria which are in the principal Act that the Government works with the insurance industry is a big exercise. The reason for this bill is because the insurance industry—because of course the levy is applied to property through insurance contracts and brokers—made it very clear that they needed more time in terms of looking at the way their services work the way their contracts were designed and the way their IT systems operated.As the Minister Martin said we need to get this right because Fire and Emergency New Zealand costs around $460 million annually and the levy needs to be appropriately set. As the Minister also noted there will be further legislation introduced into the Parliament early next year which will be more comprehensive in terms of how the levy will actually operate but this bill is a small and simple one which is simply seeking to clarify the current regime so that you don't get uncertainty with the carry-over of the transitional provisions. There's a clear deadline for when the new levy regime is to be introduced and it is quite critical that it passes the Parliament before 1 July next year when originally the new levy was planned to come into force.So it's a small perfectly formed bill. As others have said the Minister is doing a very good job in picking up this very complex amalgamation of the services fire and emergency to deal with all sorts of situations—not just fire but flooding road crashes and the like—and ensuring that they function to the best of the capability of everybody involved and provide services that are very challenging and that a lot of us wouldn't want to be doing. So again I express my gratitude both to the professionals involved in Fire and Emergency New Zealand and to the 11000 volunteers and commend this bill to the House.