Webb DuncanHon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Kia orana Mr Speaker. Well Mr Bayly it's not a bad bill. It's not as good as my bill but we had a telephone—Arena Williams: I thought it was your bill. Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Well it basically is my bill Arena Williams. You know we had a telephone conversation and Mr Bayly said Go on withdraw your bill." and I said "No." and I did the right thing because what's happened is that's hurried the Government along and we now have a Government bill. And we're pragmatic—we get it. The Government can steal the march and—Arena Williams: Take our homework.Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: —that's right steal our homework—get it there. I'm surprised you didn't mention the fact that this bill was worked on by me and before me by David Clark and before that by Kris Faafoi. This actually is a cross-party matter. We all want good insurance law.Although I was a bit flippant this bill isn't quite as good as the member's bill that I had in. There are things in it that we don't think it does quite as well. The big change is of course the non-disclosure rules or the misrepresentation rules. It is absolutely right that consumers in particular shouldn't be punished for innocent non-disclosures so making that clear is a massive leap forward. The old rule that you've got to tell the insurer everything they want to know even if you don't know they want to know it was madness and the example given by Mr Bayly is one of many examples where insurers have quite unfairly and unreasonably relied on that. The reason we have law is so that we have a baseline of good behaviour. So that's good as well.I don't think Mr Bayly mentioned the tweaks the adjustments around business insurance as well. This bill makes a division between consumer insurance and business insurance. That's really good. It also adjusts the rules around misrepresentation for business insurance and modernises them to create a duty of fair presentation which isn't the same as the old duty not to mislead or not to non-disclose. It's a much better rule and again the remedies are much more proportionate and that's good.It's important that there's still a total prohibition on fraud. I think it's really important to recognise that anyone who basically tells lies to their insurer will be out in the cold so that's always going to be a bright line. We would do things a bit differently though. I've read the clause on a reasonable time for payment; I don't think it's clear enough. My bill had a presumptive 12-month period after which the insurer would have to show that they were being reasonable in not paying out on a claim. I think having a bright line after which the insurer has to positively prove that their conduct is reasonable—and sometimes it will be. In places like West Auckland where there's land problems and they haven't resolved them yet they're probably acting reasonably but they need to show that. So I think that's one the delay there.I'm really disappointed that a good explanation of the duty of good faith which is in the member's bill which is currently before the House has been taken out of this bill and at select committee I hope that the committee will look carefully at whether it is useful to include a clear duty of good faith and to articulate it there as well.The other thing—because my time is limited but I do want to identify it—is the bringing of insurance contracts into the unfair contract terms aspect of the Fair Trading Act. We're going some way towards it but the carve-outs for exclusion clauses in particular so any exclusion clause can't be an unfair contract term and that to me seems unnecessary. What it means essentially is insurers get a free pass on unfair exclusion clauses and that can't be right. So we've got to sort that out as well.So look yes it's a good bill. We've got a lot of tidying up to do. There's a whole lot of technical changes in there that are important as well including around life insurance which is a critical part of our financial infrastructure. I know the Finance and Expenditure Committee or at least the Labour members will give this a good working over and I trust them to do so. Look you know I'll be honest I'm a bit peeved that the Minister's stolen the show but we're constructive and pragmatic. We'll put our heads down and make this bill good for all New Zealanders because insurance is of critical importance."