Foster-Bell Paul: Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFoster-Bell Paul: Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 16 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9827. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. Part 2 of this bill the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill is where the real meat and substance of this measure lies.Grant Robertson: Hang up I thought you said that earlier.PAUL FOSTER-BELL: There is a local example that I want to bring into this which brings some relevance in particular to what clause 6 sets out—the positive aspects that are outlined in clause 6. There is a relevant local example that I am sure the local member Grant Robertson will be aware of. Here in Wellington Central we have a Union parish church.Grant Robertson: A couple of them actually.PAUL FOSTER-BELL: It is St Anselm’s Union Church at 30 Mākara Road and I am sure Grant is very familiar with that. So its property its assets and the services that it provides using those assets to the community from that base in Karori will be safeguarded through this legislation. This is an important point.Just to give you the background of St Anselm’s Union Church it is a small Christian community in Karori West. That is a beautiful part of town yet it is one of the less affluent areas of Wellington if you were to look at the Habitation Index for instance. It is important that the Church maintains a strong property basis so that it can continue to offer a ministry and a community service to its flock in that area. That is also a liberal community—a liberal Christian community—and I say so because in 2014 it expressed concern that the General Assembly of the New Zealand Presbyterian Church had voted to disallow members of a partnership that was not a traditional marriage to act as ministers. This comes back to the Church’s tradition of having a focus on laity ministry rather than ordained priests but that tells me that this is not only a valuable community asset but also a liberally minded one that it sent that signal to the Presbyterian Church.In terms of the assets that will be safeguarded under clause 6 it has a hall that is available to the community to rent for not-for-profit-style functions and community events. It has something called the Bell Room and I can assure you that there is no familial connection there with the Bell Room—it is so-named because there is a bell involved. But it is a nice room with tables and chairs. It is a small room that can host meetings of maybe eight to 12 people. There is a coffee room and a kitchen for those sorts of social gatherings where the grandmothers of the community might like to get together and sit around a coffee to discuss the issues of the day. And there is of course the chapel.These are the sorts of properties that clause 6 does give some very clear advice around how they are going to be transferred to the new board and also says that there will be protections there. It will protect the board from becoming guilty of a civil wrong because it has undertaken actions despite the fact that its legislation is so significantly out of date. It does not entitle a person to terminate cancel or modify contracts or arrangements pertaining to properties such as the one that I have talked about that are valuable community assets.Just to give you another example of the sorts of things that the Union parishes offer recently they had Professor Lloyd Geering member of the New Zealand Order of Merit and also of course one of the very few people to be convicted in a blasphemy trial by the Church—in a canonical church court actually not by the State of course. Professor Geering gave a series of lectures on what we owe to ancient Iraq and what we owe to ancient Iran giving the historical and archaeological background to how the modern Christian faith has been influenced by those ancient cultures in the Holy Land.Those useful community events and services and opportunities that are offered out of the properties controlled by this property trust board do need to be safeguarded—they do need to be protected. So I think it is a very positive thing that clause 6(b)(iii) very clearly states that the legislation will not entitle a person to “require the performance of an obligation not otherwise arising for performance;”. Essentially it modernises the arrangements that are in place protecting those properties without introducing a new or onerous obligation or even in some cases impossible obligations upon the trust board. That will give great assurance to members of the St Anselm’s church community—that small but very positive liberally minded church community at Mākara Road in west Karori. For that reason I think it is highly positive.