Hughes GarethGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Madam Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou kia ora. I rise to support this legislation. Look when you've got tens of billions of dollars of New Zealand's hard-earned income invested in private enterprises—I mean for example just look at KiwiSaver. This year it cracked $45 billion. It's estimated to grow to $200 billion over the next 12 years. How that money is dealt with and the investments that are made are critically important. We want to make sure that people have certainty that financial providers are going to be acting in the best interests of their clients and their money.Now I don't know if it's a cliché in 2018 to still keep referring back to the 1980s sharemarket crash but we do know we have a different investment culture to many other developed countries. You have to wonder: was a generation burnt off by that experience of what we saw in the sharemarket in the 1970s? That's why it's critically important we have a robust fair transparent modern regime and that's exactly what this legislation is about. It's developing a new financial services regime and then secondly also embracing innovation.We saw some of the debate from the previous speaker Brett Hudson. Look it's good to be taking steps when it comes to robo-advice but the last member was absolutely right: we need to be preparing for the likes of artificial intelligence blockchain crowd computing—all the sort of modern clichés—but this is going to transform the financial market sector. Why is it important in the big scheme of things? It's because those hundreds of billions of dollars set the framework for what our country is going forward. We have an historic problem with investing. Instead of investing in modern business capital and new processes or technology we've got a history in New Zealand—maybe it dates back to the sharemarket crash—of investing in our houses and speculating on asset gain. That's why I'm so looking forward to the Tax Working Group coming back because we need to make sure we've got the tax settings right for the financial services.Look it was a pleasure to be on the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee. I'd like to acknowledge the chair. I acknowledge the members. I understand there were around 71 submitters—I thank them. For me I think one of the big changes we saw coming out of the committee was new clause 27 which is the duty to protect their clients' interests. What we heard was that financial service providers face a wide range of pressures both internal and external for the types of products they could recommend to the advisers. Having this clear and unambiguous is a very positive step forward.Obviously the committee has taken a pragmatic step which is clarified in the committee's report which is that there's a caveat. It's not requiring that a financial service provider goes across the entire product of every single range and every single potential market; it's requiring only acting in the clients' best interests.Another area where I think a reasonable pragmatic step was taken was the terms of the nominated representatives. Here you see I guess it's akin to subcontracting with financial service providers divvying out some work—so making sure we've got some clarification around where those responsibilities lie.An area I was particularly interested in and asked a number of the submitters about was around how we deal with our brand risk. We saw as a result of the Panama Papers and other international reporting that we've had some less than desirable practices in our financial markets in New Zealand. What the risk was was that some let's say less than scrupulous providers were registering in New Zealand or providing quite a tenuous link to New Zealand and then marketing themselves into international markets using New Zealand's brand and New Zealand's good name.While we're cleaning up as a result of the Panama Papers it's very positive that the Financial Service Providers Register's regime has been improved. This means that our international clients can have much more confidence that if they're dealing with a company which is on the New Zealand Financial Service Providers Register it has much more of a stronger link to New Zealand and our regulatory regime.Thirdly we look at the exclusions in clause 58. Here you'd want to make sure that as you're developing this financial services regime and applying it so that customers or clients can have confidence in their providers we're not drawing too wide of a bow so that your lawyer or your accountant or—as we heard previously before—your member of Parliament or your media is covered.We also saw the issue of disclosure of information. That's in the regulation-making powers and that was something I raised in the first reading speech that the Green Party caucus was concerned about when it was introduced under the previous Government. We didn't hear any concerns from our submitters on that so we're quite comfortable.All in all it is good legislation setting up this regime. We're comfortable with the direction. We're pleased by the improvements and glad that it's seeing unanimous support in this House tonight. We're very proud and pleased to support it. Kia ora.