Smith Lockwood: New Zealand Guardian Trust Company Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Smith Lockwood: New Zealand Guardian Trust Company Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:642;Page:12466] 
Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH (National—Rodney) 
: 
 Let me make it clear at the outset that National will support the first reading of the New Zealand Guardian Trust Company Amendment Bill for the obvious reason that we must not leave this very important trust company in a situation where it cannot operate legally. In fact the legislation is needed not only to change the name of the parent company—as the Hon Judith Tizard has just mentioned—from Promina Group to Suncorp-Metway but it is needed to validate any transactions that have already taken place since the change in the parent company’s status after 20 March this year. So the legislation is undoubtedly needed. 
I think the comments the Hon Judith Tizard has just made are useful. One has to ask oneself why we have to have this kind of legislation. In fact when I had a look at this bill I took some trouble myself to research back to 1982—as this bill amends the New Zealand Guardian Trust Company Act 1982—to see why we actually needed specific legislation to cover the New Zealand Guardian Trust Co. It is easy to say that the legislation is needed because of the activities of the New Zealand Guardian Trust Co.—the fact that it carries out functions as executors trustees or fiduciaries who are persons who hold positions of trust in relation to another person and therefore have to act in the interests of another person. 
The legislation empowers the New Zealand Guardian Trust Co. to act as an executor of wills as an administrator of estates of any deceased person and that kind of thing. Even though those are special functions I still ask myself why we need to have legislation for each one of the companies that are empowered to carry out these activities. Why is it beyond the wit of us as legislators to make the Trustee Companies Act of 1967—an Act that includes this company as a trustee company and that is the principal Act that covers issues relating to trustee companies—have a more generic component to it that can cover these companies which at the moment have to have specific legislation? 
This bill will establish a schedule so we will not need to have this legislation come back to Parliament every time the parent company changes its name or changes itself in substance. I am not sure whether the parent company just changing its name requires an amendment to the legislation but if the substance of the parent company changed in the past then the legislation certainly had to come back to this Parliament—as happened in 2004 as the Minister just mentioned. 
I think the amendment to schedule 2 that a new parent company can be handled by Order in Council rather than by taking the time of this House is certainly a sensible step. But the select committee hardly needs to devote great time to adjust the change of a name or to the possibility of amending schedule 2 to enable this process to be done more simply in the future. 
It would be worthwhile for the Finance and Expenditure Committee to take some advice on whether it is possible to handle these trustee companies in different ways because there are not a large number of companies carrying out these kinds of functions. Is it possible through amendment to the Trustee Companies Act to cover the activities of these particular companies? I do not know the answer to that; I suspect that not very many members of this House would know the answer. The Hon Judith Tizard has raised a number of issues that are rather more generic in nature which she has asked the select committee to consider. I certainly would like the select committee to have a look at whether it is possible to cover these particular kinds of companies through more generic legislation rather than have a separate bill for each company which is what I presume we have at the moment. It seems to me somewhat unnecessary to have a separate piece of legislation for every company that like the New Zealand Guardian Trust Co. carries out these particular functions; I would have thought it possible to have legislation that covers them all. So I hope the select committee can look at that for the future and see whether it is possible. 
But in the meantime National fully accepts that this legislation is needed. We must change the name of the parent company in the legislation so that the New Zealand Guardian Trust Co. can transact business with the parent company legally. We must validate those transactions as long as they are proper transactions that have taken place since the merger of Promina Group and Suncorp-Metway back on 20 March 2007 and we must validate any transactions that take place between then and when this bill becomes law. 
So with those thoughts I again indicate that National will support this legislation to the select committee. I hope the select committee looks at some of the wider issues rather than just stamping the legislation through under the simple provisions of it. I think there are wider issues that it would be worth the select committee having a serious thought about. I confirm that National will support the bill to the select committee.