Foss Craig: Business Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
Foss Craig: Business Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:635;Page:6440] 
CRAIG FOSS (National—Tukituki) 
: 
 As previous speakers have said National is speaking and voting in support of the bill. I rise to speak to Part 3 of the Business Law Reform Bill. I enjoyed my time on the Commerce Committee. It is a good solid committee and I note that the National Party managed to keep the quorum together in the spirit of good faith in Parliament. I will not speak for too long because there is obviously a lot on the Government’s agenda. We may well get to the Conservation (Protection of Trout as a Non-commercial Species) Amendment Bill tonight—one never knows. 
In previous speeches on this bill I have raised the issue—and I raise it again—of in particular the exemption power of the Accounting Standards Review Board. I have read the Minister Lianne Dalziel’s introductory speeches. I have read the committee’s explanation in the commentary. It is quite full and quite wholesome; that is fantastic. But I do see contradictions. For the life of me I cannot understand why that provision was included particularly when we had a very good submission from the Accounting Standards Review Board which pretty much pleaded to the committee—and had made I believe representations to the Minister and various other ministries—not to include this clause. 
I read in the commentary that the committee in relation to sections 24 to 27 of the principal Act essentially rejected that submission—or at least the officials have written the report in that way. I will quote a small bit relating to the Financial Reporting Act. Basically the committee justifies the inclusion of this provision because there is existing law and process allowing an exemption. The commentary states that the committee had concerns that not including this provision would lead to weak accountability because the “if the Board thinks fit” test does not make clear the criteria the board is using etc. 
Basically the committee expressed very little faith in the Accounting Standards Review Board. That did worry me somewhat because I believe that it is the Minister who appoints this board. People like New Zealand’s chief accounting officer Mr Warren and some very high-powered individuals are on that board. I will not list them all but looking at the names of the members of the Accounting Standards Review Board I would tend to put my money behind them their views and their opinions on matters affecting New Zealand’s accounting standards than on what the Minister has taken on board. I appreciate the commentary from the committee and I look forward to the Minister expanding further as to why that submission from the board was excluded. 
We will be speaking to other parts of the bill later. As Katherine Rich noted when this bill was first launched it was described as an omnibus technical bill. It has five different parts; I have just been speaking to Part 3. The National Party took the bill on board in the spirit of making existing law a little bit better. But we have politicisation—we even saw it today in question time—around the takeovers provisions of this bill. Yes I am speaking to Part 3; I will get back to it later. I just make the point that National could go hard and politicise this bill a lot more than it is. We will not in the spirit of the intent of this bill but I think we require many more explanations particularly since National members recently raised similar Supplementary Order Papers during I think the debate on the Securities Legislation Bill and were voted down. I would be interested in an answer to that. 
As I said I will speak briefly on this. I invite the Minister to explain further why she overruled that submission from the Accounting Standards Review Board given the weight intellectual grunt and commercial nous that sits on it. It is the gatekeeper of good regulation in New Zealand.