Webb DuncanDr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Well to the member for Kaikōura: shame on you. Shame on you for being half-hearted in your support of this bill. Shame on you—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order!Dr DUNCAN WEBB: —for naysaying—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order! Dr Webb please. Not me.Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Shame on the member—shame on the member for being half-hearted in his support of the bill. Absolutely. Think about it. And shame on the member for not reading it clearly. For a start read the amendment. The current position is under this bill that three months is the required time limit in which someone must make a claim. Shame on the member for not even understanding how reinsurance works. Nobody wants to put in a late claim.As for your Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 156 Mr Smith you don't seem to understand how insurance works because if we think about it carefully then we don't even need the SOP. The memorandum of understanding that was put in was a very useful memorandum of understanding but we can't require insurers to agree to an arrangement. So the suggestion that we need to put into legislation a requirement that Earthquake Commission (EQC) agree with insurers is meaningless and not only meaningless it's mischievous. It's a recipe for disaster.This bill however is a good step forward that should have been taken some time ago because the work underpinning it was done years and years ago. But what we have is some very useful progression so that we can get in place some efficiencies in the system whilst the inquiry is being undertaken. Let's not pretend that the system's working perfectly. That's well acknowledged but we don't want to be hasty in a redesign of the entire system. These are improvements that can be made very easily and improvements that everyone recognises. The increasing of the cap to $150000 is an obvious and reasonable improvement of the system so that that first level of cover will cover most of the damage that occurs in a major event. We can be a little dismissive but getting rid of the contents cover is a very significant improvement because the administrative burden associated with administering $20000 worth of contents cover is extremely high and the idea of having to have an EQC step for $20000 which often was for curtains and carpet before you could move on to your insurer and get the wider contents cover—well it's well we do away with it. In fact that simply slowed down contents claims and I must say from personal experience was a huge frustration for homeowners.In terms of the extension of claim time can I say that this is probably the point which I consider to be the most significant improvement because a number of people that I have dealt with over time did not put their EQC claims in within the required period and it is an absolutely legislative hard deadline. If you're outside of the statutory deadline then there is no give whatsoever. Many people had very good reasons for not putting that in. They might have been an absentee they might have been overwhelmed or they might have been suffering from illnesses of all kinds. It was entirely unfair that they were not entitled to make an EQC claim simply because they hadn't done it within the rigid statutory three-month period.What we have now is an ability for the Minister to push that out not only to two years but in special circumstances beyond that. Whilst in the Finance and Expenditure Committee which I sat on there was all kinds of discussion about what it might mean for reinsurance the fact is that it means nearly nothing because we know the vast majority of people put their claims in on time for a very good reason. They want to be paid. They want to get their claims settled. So in fact that very small percentage—1 percent or less—who don't get their claims in on time do it through oversight through omission through hardship and through all kinds of other reasons. That has no impact on the cost of getting reinsurance because everyone wants to be paid on time. The idea that someone would maliciously not put their claim in is fatuous. It's a ridiculous proposition and there's no motive for it whatsoever.The other important innovation here and it's one which is far more structural and less kind of immediate for any affected homeowner is the information-sharing provisions. Now these are contentious in that we are gathering information about individuals and individual claims but in fact the purpose of this is for the preparedness and the management and handling of claims. That personal information is not going to be identifiable. So what we really need to know what EQC needs to know is wider risk questions—questions about where the vulnerabilities are questions about what the damage to properties is—so that the claims can be managed much more effectively and the forward-looking risks can be managed much more effectively. In fact what that will lead to is a more effective claims system and more effective risk management and those preventative steps and educative steps that EQC can take are much better managed in the long run. As the Minister noted the Privacy Commissioner had very good advice for the select committee on that and having sat on that select committee I'm very comfortable indeed with the fact that that information-gathering exercise will be effective and that the bill as a whole will vastly improve the EQC system. So this is a great improvement. We're looking to further improvements once the commission is concluded and I commend this bill to the House.