Mathers MojoMOJO MATHERS (Green): It is a pleasure to be back here after the summer adjournment and I will take a short call on this bill. The Greens are supporting it. I was one of the members on the Government Administration Committee at the time that heard some of the submissions on this bill during the statutes amendment stage when we decided that actually the proposed changes were too substantive and potentially controversial to go through as part of the Statutes Amendment Bill. So now we are seeing them as part of the Charities Amendment Bill. The thing that really struck me about the submissions was the level of disagreement or a lack of trust between the charities sector and the hard-working volunteers from a very wide range of organisations that essentially form much of the fabric that holds society together and I saw just how much stress they are under directly as a result of the National Government's policies. That has placed this sector under huge stress. It is abundantly clear as my colleagues Poto Williams and the Hon Ruth Dyson have already mentioned that we need a full and comprehensive review of the Charities Act because the experience of having the National Council of Women of New Zealand going through the deregistration process and fighting to be reregistered with all the massive implications that that has for funding and for their work has sent shock waves through the whole charities sector as to what had always been assumed and understood among society as being work that they were doing for the common good for other people. All the volunteer hours etc. were suddenly being put at risk because of these poor relationships essentially and differing policy interpretations with the department. So absolutely the level of distrust was to my mind a real eye-opener and it was of major concern. I would urge the new Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector Alfred Ngaro—whom I would like to actually congratulate on his new appointment—to take this seriously. This is a sector that is under stress. Go out and talk to these organisations and rebuild that relationship so that they are not sitting there wondering one minute to the next whether they are going to be sued whether they have got the resources to function or whether they going to suddenly be deregistered for something or other and so that there is a fair and upfront relationship and communication between the Government and their sector. Also I would urge him to really consider doing a full review because that was promised way back when the first bill was first implemented. It never happened and constantly ignoring it and papering over the cracks is not going to work. There are too many good organisations in there to let them go on this way. The other thing that really struck me was just the fundamentally different legal interpretations of the proposed clause that got taken out of this bill. I was one of those who said that we cannot allow this clause to go ahead because we could not come to an agreement about what was the legal interpretation of that clause. We had officials telling us It is not a problem. It is just a minor amendment and will have no impact on society's ability to appeal decisions." and then there was a huge paper by the foremost front-running charities expert lawyer in New Zealand telling us the complete opposite. I do not have a legal background. There is absolutely no way that I could balance out the conflicting advice between what the officials were carefully trying to tell us and what the lawyer who was acknowledged as the foremost lawyer in the country in a very substantial submission was trying to tell us. So that is why I supported the removal of that clause altogether. Ultimately I believe it can be resolved when there is better communication between the Government officials and the sector and with honest communication I believe we would get somewhere. Thank you. So we will be supporting this bill and we commend its progress through the House."