Dyson RuthHon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Rangatira mā tēnei te mihi ki a koutou i runga i te kaupapa o te rā; tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa. [Esteemed ones I acknowledge you collectively in regard to the matter of the day; greetings salutations and my appreciation to us all.]Can I first of all say what a delight it will be for our select committee to have this piece of legislation. It has been a long time coming but I can also say that it has been through a very good process—two big rounds of reviews and a lot of public debate about it and so there should be. This is quite a fundamental change to the way that our fire services are organised. It extends their powers and it will bring to the forefront of the debate the sometimes tense relationship that professional firefighters and volunteer firefighters have had in different parts of the country but I think that the legislation is designed to give us the best possible service for the future and I am sure that every member of the House will support the intention. Our select committee will I know because of the performance of the members give the bill a lot of rigorous investigation listen carefully to the submissions and then bring it back to the House with any changes that we see fit. As the Minister who introduced this bill indicated this bill establishes a single unified fire service so that repeals two pieces of legislation. I was a bit surprised that the Minister referred to them as being—quite ancient" I think was his term. The mid-1970s is not ancient compared with some pieces of legislation that we have in the House but the Acts are old enough and certainly they reflect a structure that is no longer even current practice let alone best practice for the future. The Fire and Emergency New Zealand service will become the new service for us. I do not know why we have to have "FENZ" as the—it is not a very attractive word. We might be able to come up with something better as the name that will develop as its commonly referred to name. But certainly the new legislation when it is passed will replace the Fire Service Act 1975 and the Forest and Rural Fires Act 1977. The member Mark Mitchell who resumed his seat immediately prior to me made mention of the Fire Service brigades in his area and I would like to do the same. I have had a very close association with the brigades in my area. The two volunteer brigades that are currently in my electorate are Lyttelton and Sumner—both extraordinarily competent leaders in our community as brigades—and I have the Woolston professional fire brigade in my electorate as well. All three of the buildings—Woolston Lyttelton and Sumner—received quite a lot of damage in the earthquakes. It was extraordinary to watch the brigade in Lyttelton with a very badly damaged fire station and with members who had left their places of work give hours and hours and hours over days to ensure that the community was safe. As was written in a book called The Brigade a story about the Lyttelton Volunteer Fire Brigade and the work that it did post 22 February—which I would recommend to the Minister to read if he has not already—a number of those brigade members had not been able to contact their own families while they were giving of their skills and talents to support others. We recently had the news in Christchurch that the Sumner Fire Station which actually survived a lot of the worst of the quakes somehow—I do not know how—got very badly damaged in the last quake we had and is now going to be replaced. So that will be a celebration for them once that is under way. The insurance issue and what contribution commercial property owners make to the service I am sure will come up in the discussions. I know the Minister ducked for cover a little bit on that one—did not go the full step in terms of who contributes to the service—and I am sure that the Insurance Council and perhaps even some of its individual insurance companies will make representation on that. I am interested though in the other area of insurance—that the third-party cover is being extended under this provision and I think that is something that will be welcomed. I am not sure whether it therefore becomes compulsory—I assume it does given that it is a levy—or how broadly that third-party cover extends but I will be very interested in learning more about that when we have the bill at the select committee. The futureproofing of the legislation is also something that I think should be commended—the fact that it is a requirement under this legislation to do I think 3-yearly reviews. That will mean that we will not end up in this situation again. We will not have to have—probably—huge and significant structural changes but will be able to keep the legislation refreshed. As the needs of our communities change and the ability of people to volunteer or the reluctance potentially of employers to support their staff to volunteer—those relationships might change and I think the idea of futureproofing by that 3-yearly review is a good one. The updated offences and penalties regime includes new infringement offences. That will put Parliament in quite a different place than it has been before and I think that is a good place. We are sending a clear message to the community about standards and consequences and I think that is a very good message. The removal of the powers to recover the cost of rural fires—I listened to the Minister's introductory comments and I did not get any detail about that but I would be interested in the rationale behind the removal of those powers. There are new powers introduced for managing hazardous substances incidents. That is again just keeping up with incidents that when the original legislation was drafted probably were not as common may not have been as dangerous or may have been contained in different ways. Measures to encourage compliance among levy payers and to protect the integrity of the levy are something that everyone in this House should certainly understand and would support. There are new powers for firefighters to enter premises to investigate the causes of fires. I am not generally a supporter of giving intrusive powers to any other members of our society so I will be looking at that very carefully and asking what it will have potential risk around and if so what we might do to mitigate it. Of course we want to support investigations as to the causes of fires and prosecution if that is appropriate after that but I am nervous about granting intrusive powers to people without very good justification—and also making sure that there is a protective mechanism around such powers. In conclusion can I say that I have been—everyone in this House will have an association with fire and emergency services I am sure—really following the debate on this quite closely. I am very pleased that it has finally come to the House. It is overdue but it has been a worthwhile process to wait for. It has involved a lot of people and there has been a lot of public discussion and debate about it. So it is not a surprise bill. It is one that has got a little bit of rigour behind it—and that is not common actually under the current Government—so that is good. I think we will end up with a flexible modern and efficient fire service that is backed by its legislation instead of the current situation where I feel as if the fire service often has to try to work around the legislation to get best practice and that is a dumb thing. We want to make sure that the services—[Bell rung]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): About 1½ minutes sorry.Hon RUTH DYSON: Thank you. We want to make sure that the services are funded appropriately that the levies are fair and that people understand them and comply with them. This gives us an opportunity to do that. It gives us an opportunity throughout the debate to recognise the amazing contributions that both our professional firefighters and our volunteer firefighters make to their communities. We will be listening to their voices very carefully as the debate progresses."