Dean Jacqui: Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Dean Jacqui: Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
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JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki) 
: 
 The Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill which was brought to the House by MP Nicky Wagner has had a thorough scrutiny in the Government Administration Committee. I commend my colleagues in that select committee because we gave this bill the scrutiny it needed. 
I will tell members why I felt the bill needed a bit of scrutiny. A number of years ago over a period of years families throughout Canterbury South Canterbury North Canterbury and indeed the length and breadth of New Zealand made bequests to Christ’s College traversing matters such as scholarships for tutelage for sons and grandsons of soldiers and for the purposes of a sporting activity such as fives. A number of trusts were set up and kind donations were made into those trusts but over the years the funds are no longer needed the activity is no longer appropriate or the sport is no longer played. 
So the proprietors of Christ’s College found themselves in the position of holding on to sums of money for which they had no good purpose. As they told us in the select committee the sums of money served no use. There is no use having funds accumulating in various accounts for which there is no purpose so the select committee looked at the provisions of the bill. 
There are a number of precedents for the circumstances surrounding this bill: the Methodist Church of New Zealand Trusts Act was recently passed in this House and dealt with the same problem of funds given by bequest for a purpose that no longer exists. There is also the Anglican Church Trusts Act 1981 the Presbyterian Church Property Act 1996 and the Roman Catholic Bishops Empowering Act 1997. So we can see that this is not an uncommon problem and it was one that we were happy to deal with. 
I must credit Nicky Wagner MP for bringing this bill to the House and providing such a good link. I think it is really important for a good local MP to provide a good link between the promoters of a bill and the select committee—and indeed this Parliament. Nicky Wagner has done a particularly good job in this instance in keeping the connections going between the promoters and Parliament. 
This bill amends the Christ’s College (Canterbury) Act 1910. Members can see without even my comments prefacing this part of my speech that the legislation is well and truly out of date. What the bill seeks to do—and I think we have achieved this in the select committee—is to remove difficulties in administering trusts and property that have been invested in the college. 
The select committee needed—and wished—to tighten up a couple of the aspects of the bill as it was presented to us by the promoters. We recommended replacing the wording in the original bill as presented to the House with words from the Charitable Trusts Act. It was felt that aligning the words of that Act with those in this bill provided certainty to the intention set out in this bill. I think the promoters accepted the suggestion of the select committee to do that and were very happy to have those words put in. 
Another concern raised by members of the select committee was that the wording in the bill was a little bit loose. Some of the sums of money sitting in redundant trusts were intended for the benefit of the college yet if we go back to each individual trust we see that some of those monies were given for quite specific purposes. So it was the select committee’s wish with the agreement of the promoters that a new purpose be as close as reasonably possible to that for which the property was given to or vested in the college. If the bequest was to advance sporting interests then it was the intention and wish of the select committee that the wording in the bill reflected that. So in time to come when the proprietors of Christ’s College decide to use a bequest fund it will be for a purpose as close as possible to that which was intended in the first place. 
I was particularly happy as a committee member to see the tightening up of the wording in the bill. We did not want to see a bequest made many years ago by the family of a fallen soldier to go to something quite unrelated to that bequest because maybe the family would not have liked that. In a bequest associated with the family of a soldier or soldiers—because a number of boys of course of Christ’s College fought for our country—I felt that we needed to keep the purpose as close as possible to the original intent. 
The bill as returned to the House for its second reading keeps the spirit of the bill introduced to the House by the promoters of the bill and indeed by Nicky Wagner who brought it before us. We have also managed through the select committee process to keep the spirit of bequests as close as possible to the original intention of those people who made the bequests. With those words I commend this bill to the House.