Faafoi Kris: Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 18 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18668. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana):I will speak to Part 2 of the Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill which talks to amendments to the Limited Partnerships Act. Can I just begin where my colleague Dr David Clark finished and that is that we do support this piece of legislation and we do agree with the party on the other side on making sure there are good business conditions for New Zealand firms and that those firms want some certainty. That certainty comes about from many things. It comes from the reputation that companies have. One of those factors is obviously the laws governing companies and limited partnerships here in New Zealand.We have seen of late some concern about the reputation of some of our companies and about some people who have come to our shores to make use of our good name and to take advantage of our laws to ply their illegal trade under the guise of a New Zealand company. This bill in Part 2 goes quite a long way in the specifics to combat some of the issues that have come about. Part 2 gives the Registrar of Companies the ability to remove a limited partnership company from the register if in certain circumstances the registrar believes that there are grounds that the company is not carrying out business and there is no proper reason for it to continue to trade.I guess that is pretty precisely what I was talking to at the beginning of my contribution in terms of those people who come to New Zealand to ply their trade under the flag of a New Zealand business but have no proper reason to do that and who are engaging in what we would call either scurrilous or illegal behaviour. So that is a good power that this bill has added to the registrar to make sure that that reputation and certainty is there for New Zealand firms. There are also grounds for the registrar to remove a limited partnership—[Interruption] I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. We have already had one instance of some barracking from across the Chamber—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! You cannot refer to a previous point of order. I have already cautioned a member on your side to be terse. Please raise the point of order or I will dismiss it.KRIS FAAFOI: I cannot really concentrate on my speech with the level of barracking across the Chamber.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Let us just have a bit more decorum all round. There is a degree of agreement on the bill and there is no need for this interchange.KRIS FAAFOI: That is right. It is a relatively good day here in the Chamber. The bill also gives the ability for the registrar to respond to requests to confirm information under its enhanced investigatory powers. There are two good instances of where the Registrar of Companies has been given more power to I guess increase the reputation of New Zealand legislation around our companies to protect their reputation.I would like to refer specifically to clause 58 of the bill which inserts sections 103A to 103G in the Limited Partnerships Act. New section 103A talks about people who are prohibited from managing limited partnerships and subsection (2)(b) refers to a person who has been convicted of an offence under any of sections 377 to 380 of the Companies Act or a crime involving dishonesty as defined in section 2(1) of the Crimes Act. Maybe someone in Parliament with a legal background might be able to help me because I am not sure whether that is quite specific as to what Mr Banks was found guilty of in terms of his case which sees him no longer in this House. That certainly was a dishonest act because he declared a couple of donations as anonymous when he knew what their source was.My colleague Clare Curran made a very good point in the first part of this debate as to why it has taken so long for the changes in Part 1 and Part 2 to find their way to the Committee stage when this piece of legislation I believe was introduced to the House some 2 and a bit years ago. She made I think a very strong point that the party across the Chamber is very vocal and very quick to pass legislation when it claims it is getting tough on what you would call street-level crime but when it comes to crime of the white-collar nature it seems to drag its heels to the extreme. I think that is certainly the case here.This piece of legislation was I think first mooted by the Hon Simon Power and then introduced in the new term of this Government but we are finding ourselves on 18 June at only its Committee stage. If someone can remind me when the Commerce Committee reported this bill back to the House—I think it would have been some time ago. So maybe the Minister in the chair the Minister of Commerce could answer that question as to the Government’s attitude and its lack of urgency on this kind of criminal behaviour which again goes to the reputation of doing business here in New Zealand but it seems that when it wants to beat its chest around law and order on street-level crime even when it is not really effective it will move that through this House with great haste.Maybe the Minister in the chair the Minister of Commerce could answer that question. He has made contributions in the Committee stage that were quite useful so maybe on that specific point Minister Foss might be able to point us in the right direction as to the different attitudes that this Government has to street-level crime and to white-collar crime.We will be supporting Part 2 as we did Part 1 because it does go some way to increasing the protection around the reputation of New Zealand businesses specifically to be more specific about who can and who cannot ply trade or manage limited partnerships. Part 2 does give the Registrar of Companies much more power to monitor those. Again I make the point I made when we debated Part 1. We need to make sure that the registrar has the resources to do that because this Government along with the likes of the Commerce Commission has talked about giving the registrar new powers but has not necessarily given him the ability or the backing to make sure he can effectively express those new powers. Certainly that has been the case in other pieces of legislation.So just to finish off we would ask the Minister in the chair to talk to the specific question as to why this Government has a different attitude to street-level crime and to white-collar crime. I do not really rate our chances of getting an answer.