SpeechFIRE AND EMERGENCY NEW ZEALAND (LEVY) AMENDMENT BILLSecond ReadingDebate resumed from 21 February.TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Well what a double delight this is! I'm back again five minutes later and now we are talking about the Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Levy) Amendment Bill second reading. So it has been to the select committee. We supported it with some reservations—which I'll touch on shortly—to the select committee. As I'm sure previous contributors to this bill will have attested: 19 submissions and seven in favour two did not support and eight did not specify which is interesting in itself actually to have a submission which doesn't say whether you support or not. However I'm sure they had their reasons.Anyway the key changes to the bill that were agreed by the committee was a tweak to the definition of a contract of fire insurance in clause 6(3) amending the definition of sum insured". Levy exemptions: there were a range of submitters talking about the levy arrangements for museums and galleries—maybe they were part of the uncommitted seven submitters—but they certainly were keen that museums and galleries retained their exemptions which the committee agreed was a good and solid policy position. So that has been recommended. And then there was a technical change to how the levy applies to motor vehicles—more just sort of wrapping up potential confusion. So we support this. It still is though from our perspective a lost opportunity. There has been debate on both sides of the House over the years over how best to fund Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ). I've been previously the spokesperson in this space. It struck the National Party that really when you look at the income stream of this organisation and the fact that it doesn't have to compete with other departments with Treasury for Treasury largesse—it essentially just takes it off motor vehicle owners and particularly commercial property owners. And when you see the scale of the income over the last five years—reaching $460 million which is over $200 million more than what was expected by this time in its development when it came together in 2017—there was an argument I think of actually looking at FENZ quite fiscally muscularly if you like to check whether they were being efficient with their spend to see if there are other ways to fund them as opposed to just tweaking the current model which has been in place for quite some time which does have elements of free riders does have a disproportionate impact on commercial property owners.Rather than taking that opportunity the Government we think went for the easy option of essentially rolling over the model that's been there for quite some time and just tweaking at the margins. Frankly there isn't enough focus from a National Party perspective on the financial performance of FENZ. It doesn't have that rigour in our view that other departments arguably have in terms of Government oversight. They have a board—quite a political board. In fact some of the board members are able to reflect on whether they think the Opposition are progressing well or not and still stay in their jobs. So it's quite clearly a political board with perhaps more of a focus on playing political games as opposed to driving the organisation in a way that would stand at the level that would be expected in other Crown agencies.However what has been put forward doesn't cross the threshold of us opposing but we do believe that whilst the changes can at one level be justified it is a huge opportunity missed to actually restructure FENZ get them more focused on delivering a better outcome for the money they receive and actually getting greater equity in terms of the funding model over time. Thank you very much."