Russell DeborahDr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I am delighted to be able to stand and speak to this excellent bill that is in front of the House and to commend it to the House. You know we grew up in a simple world many of us—a world where the people who gave financial advice were accountants and lawyers and no one else much and the sorts of things we invested in were fairly simple too. It might have been shares if you were lucky. It might have been perhaps that you owned a house but that was about it. These days things are a lot more complex and even something that we have done as a nation to make the world a better place and to make New Zealand a better place—bringing in KiwiSaver—has created a whole lot more complexity and people are quite understandably looking for financial advice.It turned out that often the sort of financial advice you could get was the sort of financial advice that was handed out over the barbie which said Do you know what mate? Are you going to get some shares in that company down the road?" Now this bill does not intend to capture people who offer that kind of financial advice. It's not the sort of backyard conversation and in fact that's specifically ruled out. What it does intend to capture is people who give financial advice and who hold themselves out as financial advisers and are remunerated for doing so. By pulling together several sets of legislation it is creating a regulated activity—creating a regulated field of endeavour—and saying that this is the way that people operating in this industry ought to conduct themselves.I think one of the major themes of this legislation is looking out for the little guys; making sure that when the small investors—the people who have perhaps their KiwiSaver savings or a little bit of spare money to invest—seek financial advice they can rely on the advice that's given to them. There's one particular aspect of this bill that I think is really very important indeed and that is setting up a code of conduct for people operating in the financial advice industry.You know codes of conduct—professional codes of conduct—are absolutely common in any professional endeavour. Doctors have them lawyers have them accountants have them and politicians perhaps don't—and maybe we should think about that—but it's clear that we do need one in the field of financial advice because we know there has been some pretty unregulated activity taking place there. Now this particular bill doesn't set up the code of conduct itself. So in that sense it doesn't have the substance of the code of conduct sitting there and that we might think is a problem but I don't think it really is. I think that the real thing is that it sets up a really robust process for setting up a code of conduct. It's got a process by which the Minister must appoint people to set up a committee that will write the code and it explicitly addresses what the code of conduct ought to look at. It says that a code of conduct must specify the levels of competence and knowledge and skills that anyone who is holding themselves out as a financial adviser must adhere to. That is absolutely consistent with other professional groups too. They set a standard that people must adhere to.This bill also says that whatever code of conduct is devised it must set standards for ongoing education of people who are operating in this industry. Again that is exactly like other professional codes of conduct and it is actually very important in this particular industry where new financial instruments are being developed all the time where new ways of doing business are being developed where more and more people will be seeking that financial advice just as more and more KiwiSaver funds mature. So that ongoing education component is very important.But the important point about this code of conduct is that it sets a standard. It's aspirational and that's really important. It says to people operating in this industry that you must operate in an ethical fashion and here is the standard that you must achieve. It is asking the industry as well to regulate itself to have a think amongst itself amongst its own members about what is acceptable conduct and what is not. To me that is the essence of a profession: people getting together and working out what works best for them and what works best for their clients—the little guys. That's who this bill looks after. That is the reason why I commend this bill to the House."