Martin Tracey; Rurawhe AdrianHon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister of Internal Affairs): I raise a point of order Mr Chair. I seek leave for all provisions to be taken as one debate.CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be not.Clauses 1 to 8Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister of Internal Affairs): Thank you Mr Chair. Thank you very much. Could I just acknowledge my honourable colleague and the questions that he has asked me—questions that quite rightly need to be answered so thank you very much. So I will take a moment to talk about Supplementary Order Paper 205. If I could just recap the main purpose of the original bill as I'm sure my honourable colleague has already mentioned was to amend the commencement date for the new levy regime because currently in the legislation when Fire and Emergency New Zealand was being amalgamated under the previous administration 1 July was the day for a new levy to commence. The Fire and Emergency is funded currently on property insurance. Since I sat in the seat one of the things that has become clearer as the Department of Internal Affairs has been working with insurance companies and insurance brokers while they were planning on the implementation of this new levy is not only that there wasn't going to be enough time for insurance companies to amend their computer systems and so on and so forth hence the reason for the original bill but what has since come to light is the fact that the Department of Internal Affairs was not previously given permission to pursue any other ways for the levy to be collected. Internationally property insurance or through insurance companies is not the only way for a fire and emergency service to have that levy collected and funded. There were two things that were really important when I took over this particular portfolio. One was that the levy would be fair to those who were paying the levy for the services that they were going to receive from Fire and Emergency New Zealand. The other was that Fire and Emergency New Zealand had enough funding to do the work that we as a society expect them to do. What came to light and it was sort of alluded to previously was that the current implementation should we go forward with what is in the original bill would not be fair. It would not be fair for example that a very large national property portfolio insured at say $4.5 billion against fire and $25 billion against material damage will have their levy rise under what is proposed from $4.7 million per year to $18.5 million per year. Now that cannot be fair. This would be a large supermarket chain for example—a very large organisation. But those large organisations also put in a reasonable amount of funding from their own purse to make sure that they meet all the fire restrictions all the fire alarms and smoke detectors and sprinkler systems and so on and so forth. Under the current levy structure there is no consideration of the upfront cost to say a large company and what they spend to try and minimise the damage or the requirement that they might need for fire and emergency services.So I have requested and am requesting that the House support Supplementary Order Paper 205 to extend the time frame. The current levy in the current way that it is applied provides enough funds for Fire and Emergency New Zealand to continue the work that it is doing to invest more in our rural fire service and our volunteer fire service and to move across from the amalgamation and integration in the way that was originally envisaged by the previous Minister. So I have no concerns at all that they will not have enough funding if we just continue the status quo right now but I do want to give the Department of Internal Affairs the time to really go through a first principles look at how and who should pay this levy because I do think that fairness is just as important as the ability to make sure that the service is funded. The second part of the Supplementary Order Paper is to remove the requirement of the defence force to have to pay the levy and that is in recognition of the fact that they already have their own fire service and they also put cells on the ground in every emergency—Kaikōura for example they were there; Christchurch; Nelson-Tasman fires they were there. So it's in recognition that the defence force actually are part of the Fire and Emergency Services and that they give us a whole lot of support so therefore to levy them as well—again we come back down to what is reasonable practical and fair. Kia ora.